Portfolio & Publishing Platform · Full Stack
ProductionUgbanawaji
The application behind this portfolio, with a private CMS, publishing workflows, media management, newsletters, analytics, search and AI-assisted interaction with published content.
Problem
What problem existed before the work
A static portfolio made it difficult to publish technical work, maintain case studies, manage media and keep public evidence current without editing source code.
Constraints
What the system had to respect
The public site and private editorial tooling need to live in one product while preserving secure admin boundaries, scheduled publishing and reliable data ownership.
Challenge
Why the problem was difficult
The platform needs to support both a polished public portfolio and a practical editorial back office without turning every content update into a deployment.
Approach
How I approached it
Built a Next.js application with MySQL/Drizzle, Better Auth, private CMS workflows, newsletter tooling, analytics and an evidence-grounded portfolio assistant.
Architecture
How the system was shaped
Next.js serves the public site and authenticated admin workspace. MySQL stores content and editorial state; background jobs handle scheduled work and AI indexing.
Key decisions
Decisions and reasoning
Keep public portfolio content in the database, make the CMS the source of truth, and ground AI answers only in published portfolio evidence.
Trade-offs
What was deliberately accepted or rejected
Owning the CMS increases implementation scope compared with using a hosted CMS, but keeps editorial workflows, portfolio data and AI indexing under one application model.
Implementation
How the design moved into production
Implemented content authoring, revisions, scheduled publishing, media providers, newsletter workflows, search, analytics, contact management and AI indexing.
Reliability & security
How correctness and failure were handled
Authentication, admin-only mutations, validation, audit logs and explicit published/draft states separate public content from editorial operations.
Impact
What changed
Provides one editable platform for portfolio content, technical writing and supporting engineering evidence.
Lessons learned
What the work reinforced
A portfolio becomes more useful when publishing and maintenance are treated as product workflows rather than static-page chores.
Case studies involving employer or client systems intentionally describe architecture and outcomes at a high level. They do not expose confidential source code, credentials, internal endpoints or restricted operational details.