I’ve tried building my portfolio website on this channel before…and yeah, it was ugly. So I did it again, but this time as a proper challenge: get a fully functional portfolio designed, coded, and deployed in about 5 hours. The process had three parts: design, code, and deployment. For design, I worked with Fiverr (sponsor) and hired two designers—one level-one seller and one top-rated seller—because I was genuinely curious if “top-rated” actually means better output. I also put together a proper design brief (brand vibe, color palettes, typography, and inspirations like Ali Abdaal) so the designers weren’t guessing. Once the designs came back, the difference was obvious. The top-rated designer’s work had way more warmth, detail, and consistency across pages, so I used her design fully. Then I built the site with Next.js because I want it to be extendable later (blogs, database, etc.), and deploying to Vercel is basically cheating—in a good way. I spent ~1.5 hours just getting the homepage looking crisp (hero image, signature logo, quick facts, footer), built a Free Resources page with clickable categories that open modals, and finished with a Projects page with cards and an “Explore More” modal in MD format. It’s not perfect (responsive is…not happening yet), but it’s deployed and it works, which is the whole MVP win.