Personal Portfolio Website — 100% Kotlin

A single-page "Matrix" hacker-green themed portfolio built with Kobweb (Compose HTML + Silk). Statically exported and deployed to GitHub Pages.

The repo has two modules:

• site/ — the Kobweb frontend (Compose HTML/Silk). Exported to static HTML/JS/CSS via kobwebExport and served from GitHub Pages.
• visit-notifier/ — a small standalone JVM backend (plain com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpServer, no framework) that receives one POST /api/visit per browser session and emails the owner via the Resend HTTP API. Deployed separately (e.g. Render).

Getting Started

First, run the development server by typing the following command in a terminal under the site folder:

$ cd site
$ kobweb run

Open http://localhost:8080 with your browser to see the result.

You can use any editor you want for the project, but we recommend using IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition downloaded using the Toolbox App.

Press Q in the terminal to gracefully stop the server.

Live Reload

Feel free to edit / add / delete new components, pages, and API endpoints! When you make any changes, the site will indicate the status of the build and automatically reload when ready.

Exporting the Project

When you are ready to ship, you should shutdown the development server and then export the project using:

kobweb export

When finished, you can run a Kobweb server in production mode:

kobweb run --env prod

If you want to run this command in the Cloud provider of your choice, consider disabling interactive mode since nobody is sitting around watching the console in that case anyway. To do that, use:

kobweb run --env prod --notty

Kobweb also supports exporting to a static layout which is compatible with static hosting providers, such as GitHub Pages, Netlify, Firebase, any presumably all the others. You can read more about that approach here: https://bitspittle.dev/blog/2022/staticdeploy

Visit Notification Service

This repo now contains a separate backend service in visit-notifier/ for visit email notifications. The frontend stays static on GitHub Pages and sends one POST /api/visit request per browser session.

Frontend config

Set the backend base URL at build time:

./gradlew :site:kobwebExport -PkobwebExportLayout=STATIC -PkobwebEnvironment=PROD -PvisitNotifyApiBaseUrl=https://your-backend.example.com

For local frontend development, the visit reporter falls back to http://localhost:8787 when the site runs on localhost and no explicit visitNotifyApiBaseUrl is provided.

Backend config

Copy visit-notifier/.env.example to visit-notifier/.env for local development, or into your host's runtime environment settings for deployment. Required runtime variables:

ALLOWED_ORIGINS=https://<your-gh-pages-domain>,https://<your-custom-domain>
RESEND_API_KEY=re_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
VISIT_NOTIFY_TO=you@example.com
VISIT_NOTIFY_FROM=notifications@yourdomain.com

Emails are sent via the Resend HTTP API (port 443), not SMTP — this is what lets the backend run on Render's free tier, which blocks outbound SMTP port 587. VISIT_NOTIFY_FROM must be a verified sender/domain in your Resend account.

Run the backend locally with:

./gradlew :visit-notifier:run

The backend now reads configuration from process environment variables and also from a local .env file. Process environment variables take precedence over .env values.

Endpoints:

• GET /health
• POST /api/visit

Render deployment

Use the Docker service type for visit-notifier only.

Set these values in Render:

• Root Directory: leave blank
• Dockerfile Path: Dockerfile
• PORT: 10000
• ALLOWED_ORIGINS: your frontend origin(s), comma-separated
• RESEND_API_KEY: your Resend API key
• VISIT_NOTIFY_TO: the inbox that should receive the visit emails
• VISIT_NOTIFY_FROM: a verified sender/domain in your Resend account

After deploy, Render will give you a service URL like https://your-service.onrender.com. Put that in the GitHub variable VISIT_NOTIFY_API_BASE_URL before you next export or deploy the frontend.