Building a High-Performance Full-Stack Portfolio: Hugo, Supabase & Deno

When engineers build their portfolios, they often choose between two extremes: a simple static page or an over-engineered Single Page Application (SPA). For my portfolio, I chose a third path: a modular, event-driven architecture that combines the speed of a static site with the power of a serverless backend.

Architectural Philosophy

The primary goal was to achieve a 100/100 Lighthouse score while maintaining dynamic features such as a newsletter system and automated reporting.

Tech Stack:

• Frontend: Hugo (Static Site Generator) + Tailwind CSS 4.0.
• Search: Pagefind (static search on the client side).
• Backend-as-a-Service: Supabase (PostgreSQL + Edge Functions).
• Runtime: Deno (TypeScript) for serverless business logic.
• Automation: GitHub Actions (CI/CD + Cron jobs).

Engineering Highlights

1. Event-Driven Newsletter System

Instead of a traditional API server, I utilized Supabase Edge Functions built on the Deno runtime.

The Workflow:

1. User submits an email via a custom HTML form (zero-dependency JS).
2. The Edge Function validates the payload and communicates with the Resend API.
3. Subscriber data is stored in PostgreSQL with Row Level Security (RLS) policies enabled, ensuring user data is protected even if the anonymous API key is exposed.

2. Hybrid CI/CD Pipeline

My GitHub Actions workflow manages three different runtimes in a single pass, demonstrating a highly flexible deployment strategy:

• Node.js: Compiles Tailwind CSS and generates the Pagefind search index.
• Python: Executes a newsletter.py script to generate reports directly from the database.
• Hugo: Generates the final static production build.

# Snippet from the deployment workflow
- name: Run Newsletter Report
  env:
    SUPABASE_URL: ${{ secrets.SUPABASE_URL }}
    RESEND_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.RESEND_API_KEY }}
  run: python newsletter.py

3. Resource Optimization (The “Keep-Alive” Pulse)

Free-tier cloud services often “pause” databases after a period of inactivity. To prevent this, I implemented a Pulse workflow using a GitHub Action cron job (every day at midnight) to perform a small PATCH request to the database, keeping the Supabase instance active.

Bash

# GitHub Action ping (Keep-Alive)
curl -f -X PATCH "${{ secrets.SUPABASE_URL }}/rest/v1/keep_alive?id=eq.1" \
     -H "apikey: ${{ secrets.SUPABASE_ANON_KEY }}" \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer ${{ secrets.SUPABASE_ANON_KEY }}" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d "{\"last_ping\": \"$(date -u +'%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ')\"}"

Design & Performance

• Tailwind 4.0: Utilizing the latest @tailwindcss/cli for ultra-fast builds and a minimal CSS footprint.

• Zero-Flash Theme Switching: A custom JavaScript implementation prevents the “white flash” during page loads if a user prefers Dark Mode.

• Asset Pipeline: Hugo handles minification and fingerprinting for all resources, allowing for aggressive caching on the CDN (GitHub Pages).

Local Development

The project is designed to be deterministic. By using npm ci, I ensure that all dependencies (such as Lucide icons or Swup for smooth transitions) are identical in both local and production environments.

Bash

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/ahalvadzija/ahalvadzija.github.io.git

# Install dependencies
npm ci

# Run the Hugo development server
npm run dev

Conclusion

This portfolio is not just a showcase of my work; it is proof that modern web tools allow for the creation of complex, full-stack systems without the need for expensive infrastructure. The focus on Type Safety (TypeScript), Automation (Python/Actions), and Performance (Hugo) forms the core of my engineering approach.

View the full source code: ahalvadzija.github.io