First, thank you for visiting my website and taking the time to read my blog. This is the 3rd version of my web app (V3.0)—yes, there were two previous versions that used older platforms. The current platform is ASP.NET Core 8.0, which is the latest Long Term Support (LTS) version as of this writing. My tech stack consists of .NET, HTML, CSS, C#, and JavaScript. I currently use Razor Pages to simplify and minimize the complexity of my web application, but I will add MVC/MVVM as the application evolves. The UI is based on Metronic, which I found to be easy to use, well-documented, and modern.

I currently host this on Microsoft Azure, utilizing Azure App Services, which is relatively inexpensive for a simple website—or even one that does not require many resources. The code is managed locally for now, but will soon be managed using Microsoft’s Azure DevOps. No database or identity services are being used during this initial deployment, but they will be implemented in my next blog post. There will be a SQL database that will eventually be hosted in Azure using Azure SQL Database on the DTU purchase model, which offers an inexpensive Basic (B) option for less than $5 per month.

Future plans for this web application will include an identity provider such as the built-in ASP.NET Identity. I did not include it during the initial creation so that I can customize it and change the encryption settings from PBKDF2 with 10,000 iterations to a more robust and modern encryption method using Argon2. I will share more details about this change once it has been implemented.

The near future of this app will include the following:

So why create my own web app, blog, etc. when there are many options like WordPress, Squarespace, and others? I wanted something unique that offers greater flexibility and helps me learn the various aspects of today’s modern applications, such as containers, APIs, cloud services, integrations, and more.

Stay tuned for my next blog post—hopefully within the next week—as I implement ASP.NET Identity with Argon2, and perhaps even start building a blog administration area.