9 entries — real, dated progress notes for samiaktas.com.
Entry 18milestone
The site is bilingual now: the English version is live
samiaktas.com/en is open — the entire site in English: homepage, journal archive and venture pages. A TR/EN button sits top right; there is deliberately no auto-redirect (Google's advice: hreflang + user choice). All 15 journal entries, my About story and the whole UI were hand-translated; even dates format per language. Zero code duplication: the same files render both languages. AI engines and Google can now cite this ledger for English queries too.
i18n · hreflang · SEO · Astro
Entry 17optimization
Code diet: ~8 MB of dead weight gone, structure now modular
We cleared the leftovers of the old single-file site (nearly 8 MB of dead files); the original went into the archive. Header, footer and journal-entry blocks that were copy-pasted across three pages became single components — changing a view now means editing one file. Cyrillic/Greek/Vietnamese font subsets a Turkish site never uses were dropped too (39 definitions down to 16). The look stayed pixel-identical.
Refactor · Modular Architecture · Performance
Entry 13transparency
Real expenses and technology tags
The ledger's 'zero expenses' didn't reflect reality — we opened an overhead class called 'Workflow & Tools' and recorded the Claude Pro subscription (17 USD ≈ ₺796). Transparency now shows the real number; the class doesn't count as a venture and gets its own itemized section. Every journal entry also got tags for that day's technologies and security work — visitors see at a glance what each job was built with.
Transparency · Overhead · Tagging
Entry 10
Journal archive and venture pages
As the build journal grew, we restructured it: the homepage now shows only the last 5 entries and the full ledger lives at /gunluk. Every venture got its own journal page — Payda and samiaktas.com read separately, and any new venture gets its page automatically. Entries now run newest to oldest, every page introduces itself to search engines with its own title and schema, and the sitemap updates itself.
Astro · SEO · Schema.org
Entry 09Automation
The site publishes itself + a triple expert audit
Today we built a pipeline that automatically rebuilds and publishes the site on every edit (build → deploy → instantly notify search engines). Then came three separate expert audits — design, SEO/GEO and security: accessibility/contrast fixes, richer structured data, and the database write rule locked to my account only. Note: this entire site was built with a single Claude Pro subscription, together with AI.
CI/Automation · Security · SEO · Accessibility
Entry 08Move to Astro
Rebuilt the site with zero-JavaScript Astro
For the fastest visibility on AI and Google, we moved the site to a fully static, zero-JavaScript Astro build. The result: ~34 KB, sub-half-second loads, and every piece of content embedded so bots read it instantly. We simplified the design too: a text-first opening and a single large photo in About.
Astro · Tailwind CSS · Zero-JS
Entry 06Identity & login
Identity, login and the UI settled
We wrote the About text (Adana; starting my software entrepreneurship with this site), secured the admin login with Firebase and reworked the UI. We also found and fixed a missing DNS record on the e-mail side; [email protected] works now.
Firebase Auth · DNS · Security
Entry 04SEO & AI
Search-engine and AI visibility package
We introduced the site to Google, Bing and Yandex; set up the sitemap, robots.txt, llms.txt, Schema.org markup and IndexNow. AI crawlers like GPTBot/ClaudeBot got read access. Cloudflare added speed, security (SSL, WAF) and a caching layer.
SEO · Schema.org · Cloudflare · WAF/SSL
Entry 02First launch
The site is finally live
We moved the broken portfolio site to Firebase Hosting and got it online. Split the single 7 MB file into pieces and made it persistent with Firestore; the page no longer resets on every refresh. Step by step, with AI, without knowing how to code.