Author: Deepak Battula

24 Days of Deployment: My new portfolio website

It started with what I thought was a simple plan. On July 25th, I was working on my first-ever portfolio website, planning a small UI tweak. My goal was to remove the "Tags" tab from the header and move it into a dedicated column on the left of the blog page.

My local server was running well. The code worked well on my machine. But when I pushed it to Vercel for deployment, I hit a wall. A stubborn bug appeared-a pickle throwing spanners in my work.

I spent nearly a week trying to fix it. After 13 failed deployments, I realized the problem wasn't a single line of code; the foundation of that first project was unstable. I felt bad to think about abandoning my first website, but I didn't hesitate.

My Vercel deployment log :

A screenshot of a Vercel deployment page showing a long list of failed builds with red error indicators.

I had a saying I told to use while I was young to move on from things close to my heart:

"A rocket doesn't carry its launching pad, no matter how helpful it was."

The launching pad is critical for the start, but the rocket's journey is always ahead. My first website was my launching pad. It taught me invaluable lessons, but it was time to let it go to move forward.

So, I made the call. I took a break from the portfolio, focused on my Google internship, and came back. After the breakI showed up with a new plan: a fresh start. All the lessons learned from the "failed" project made building the new one faster and smarter.

After a 24-day exile, I'm back. My internship is complete, I have a notebook full of new project ideas, and my new portfolio is finally live. The old site is still available on my GitHub—a testament to the journey and a reminder that every rocket needs a launching pad.

Things I leant on the way

Systematic Debugging: I learned to read Vercel build logs, and solve complex conflicts across Git, TypeScript, and ESLint.
The Value of a Strong Foundation: I understood the importance of starting clean versus endlessly patching of an unstable project.
Professional Git Workflow: I mastered commits, resolving merge conflicts, and maintaining a clean project history.
Never forget self-taught proverbs.