Bernard Uhden Jr. Portfolio Website

My personal website needed to do more than look polished. It needed to clearly communicate my positioning as a designer, developer, and performance-focused technical problem solver.

I rebuilt the site using Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, GitHub, and Vercel to create a faster, more scalable foundation than a traditional brochure-style portfolio.

The result is a component-based website that can grow over time with new case studies, service pages, blog content, landing pages, and future integrations.

With more than two decades of experience across design, development, WordPress, email marketing, print, hosting, SEO, and performance optimization, the challenge was not a lack of material. The challenge was organizing that experience into a clear, modern, focused presentation.

• Showcase design and development skills together.
• Highlight performance optimization as a specialty.
• Create a reusable case study system.
• Move beyond a static portfolio into a scalable web app architecture.
• Demonstrate current front-end skills with Next.js and React.

The site needed to feel credible to clients, recruiters, agencies, and technical hiring managers.

Earlier in my career, I loved building dynamic websites with ColdFusion because it made web development feel logical, structured, and powerful. Templates, includes, reusable logic, and dynamic content all made sense to me.

Working with Next.js brought back that same feeling — but with a modern stack. Instead of managing every page manually, the site is organized around routes, reusable components, typed data structures, and clean deployment workflows.

That connection matters because it shows how my past development experience directly supports my current technical growth. The tools are newer, but the underlying thinking is familiar: structure the content well, reuse the right pieces, and build systems that scale.

Once the structure was established, the site began coming together rapidly. Core sections, routing, responsive layouts, featured projects, and multiple case studies were created in a short, focused build cycle.

The fast timeline was possible because the project used a clean component structure, utility-first styling, and a deployment workflow that made testing and publishing nearly instant.

• Homepage structure established.
• Reusable components created.
• Case study archive built.
• Multiple case study pages launched.
• GitHub and Vercel deployment workflow connected.
• Responsive refinements made across desktop, tablet, and mobile.

Building this site reinforced that modern front-end development is not disconnected from my earlier experience. My years working with WordPress, PHP, ColdFusion-style thinking, templating, layout systems, performance optimization, and content architecture all translated directly into this project.

Next.js simply gave me a faster, cleaner way to apply the same problem-solving mindset: organize the content, create reusable systems, optimize the experience, and deploy with confidence.