A few years ago, I bought a domain. I set it up on a basic paid WordPress plan, told myself I would eventually customize it into something incredibly catchy and fancy, and then… I let it sit. I had tons of excuses not to work on the website redesign 😀
It didn’t reflect who I had become, the complexity of the tech work I was doing, the talks I was giving, or the community I was building. I wanted a digital presence that actually felt like me—something polished and distinct, but I kept pushing it down the to-do list. Next month, I’ll fix it.
Next month never came 😀
Shifting Gears and Diving into Learning
I started learning. Slowly. Intentionally. No deadlines, no pressure. Just genuine curiosity about how things worked. Before my maternity break, I started learning Playwright, and I was halfway through. Now, I was thinking about redoing my Website so I started with WordPress internals, PHP theming, CSS customization, and how scripts could automate what I was doing manually. It was the kind of learning that reminded me why I got into tech in the first place. The joy of figuring things out.
I didn’t just consume content. I started building things. Writing scripts. Testing, debugging, fixing. Getting comfortable with the messy middle of making something from scratch.
Then Came the Nudge I Needed
Here’s the thing about being stuck. Sometimes you don’t need more time. You need someone who believes in you enough to say, “Just do it. And I’ll help.”
That someone, for me, was my friend at Aurae Software Solutions.
That push came from my friend at Aurae Software Solutions. She looked at my old website and gave me the exact nudge I needed. She reminded me that I deserved a website that actually represented my expertise, and told me that her team at OS2 Studio could help me build the foundation to do it right.
And they did.
Aurae Solutions and OSS Studio built me a custom WordPress template. This wasn’t a generic theme you buy off a marketplace, but something clean, built thoughtfully, with my brand and my needs in mind. That custom template became the bones of everything you see on my site today.
When someone invests that kind of effort in your vision, it lights a spark. I didn’t want to let it sit unused. I wanted to build on it, to make it worthy of the foundation they gave me. So, I got to work.
What I Actually Did (Because This Part Matters)
Okay, now having a custom template handed to you doesn’t mean your website builds itself. There was so much work left to do. Work that I did myself, script by script, fix by fix, late in the evenings while my baby slept.
I migrated all my old content. I customized the layout. I organised my LinkedIn recommendations and built out a structured way to display them. I imported over 50 guest blog articles across multiple publishers into a Custom Post Type. I restructured my Speaking section. I added expertise cards. And I wrote some scripts.
I am sharing this not to brag. I’m sharing it because it was hard. And the fact that it was hard is exactly why it meant something to finish it.
If you are a tester reading this, you know how satisfying it is when something finally works the way it should. That feeling? Yes, I got it from my website.
Claude Was My Late-Night Thinking Partner
Yes, I need to admit this. I am a great fan of Claude even before this 😀
Throughout the past three months of building, Claude was open in another tab more often than not.
I have been a fan of Claude even before this 😀 And I’ll say this genuinely, Claude is one of the best things in the AI era.
When I was debugging a CSS issue at 11 pm, Claude helped me think it through. When I was trying to figure out the right WordPress hook to use, it walked me through options.
If you are a tester and you haven’t made Claude part of your toolkit, I genuinely want to ask — why not? It’s like having a knowledgeable buddy who never gets tired of your questions and never makes you feel silly for asking them. And yes, in some places, it was simply following my flow and working on continuous patch fixes. I used to question it and provide the right context, and ask it to think through again. So don’t trust the output blindly; question it. And reiterate to refine your output.
Here’s What I Want You to Take Away
If you have read this far, you are probably someone who cares about their craft. Maybe you are a tester, a QA lead, a developer, someone building a career in tech.
And I want to say something directly to you:
Your portfolio is not a vanity project. It’s your professional heartbeat.
The number of brilliant people I have met who have no online presence — no website, no writing, nothing that says “this is who I am and what I know” — genuinely makes me sad. Not because they are failing. But because the world doesn’t know they exist.
You are doing incredible work. You have opinions are worth sharing. You have experiences that would help someone who might be your junior version right now.
But none of that matters if it lives only in your head.
Start somewhere. A blog. A LinkedIn post. A simple website. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Mine certainly wasn’t for years.
Building a personal brand isn’t about being an influencer or chasing followers. It’s about being findable. Being credible. Creating a trail of evidence that says, “this person knows what they are doing, they are generous with their knowledge, and they are worth paying attention to”.
Conferences notice. Collaborators notice. Opportunities notice.
Your website is your digital handshake with the world. Make it one you are proud of 👏
Thank You, Aurae Software Solutions and OS2 Studios
Before I wrapup, I want to say this one more time.
To my friend and her team at Aurae Siftware Solutions: thank you. The custom template you built gave me the platform I needed. But more than that, your nudge gave me the push I clearly needed. You saw potential in this project before I had the energy to act on it.
That’s what good people do. They believe in you even when you are in the middle of figuring yourself out. I hope this website and everything that grows from it makes you proud too 🎉