brett-2024 (brettowers.com)

Purpose

brettowers.com started as a portfolio site built on Appwrite with collections for projects, services, technologies, automations, and essays. It was completely unnecessary infrastructure for what is fundamentally a static personal site. The current version is what it should have always been: an SEO-optimized hub that connects Brett Owers (the developer) to Potatuhs (the brand), with a project blog that tells the real story.

Stack

What I Learned

• The original build used Appwrite for everything — contact form submissions, project listings, essay content, technologies, services. Every page made API calls to a database to render content that changes once a month. This is over-engineering: using a BaaS with real-time sync for content that could be a JSON file. The lesson applies everywhere: choose infrastructure that matches your actual update frequency, not your imagined one.
• The rebuild strips Appwrite out of the content path and uses local TypeScript data files (like the project-posts.ts file powering this blog). Static generation means every page is pre-rendered at build time — no API calls, no database dependency, no cold starts. The site loads instantly because there is nothing to fetch.
• The real purpose of brettowers.com is not to be a portfolio — it is to be a lynchpin. It connects the real person (Brett Owers, developer, based in Fort Collins) to the brand ecosystem (Potatuhs, Potatocore, Hot Potato Games, Potato Literature). Every page links outward to the ecosystem. Every ecosystem property links back here. The site is a node in a graph, not a standalone destination.
• SEO optimization (JSON-LD Person schema, per-page metadata, sitemap, robots.txt, Open Graph tags) exists to win the "Brett Owers" search result. The competition is another Brett Owers (CFO at Winning Group in Sydney). Structured data, rich content, and backlinks from owned properties are the strategy. This project blog — dozens of keyword-rich, interlinked pages — is the content engine.
• Formspree replaced Appwrite for the contact form because a contact form does not need a database — it needs an inbox. Formspree receives the submission and emails it. No infrastructure to maintain, no database to query, no admin panel to check. The right tool for the job is the simplest tool that solves the problem.

Key Insights

• This site is the culmination of everything in this blog: the Chrome extension skills from the first project, the design sensibility from the Adobe CC recreation, the self-determination from Array Mobile, the publishing pipeline from 101 Haikus, the SEO knowledge accumulated across every web project, the Formspree integration from thepotatopress, and the AI-assisted development from Claude Code that composed every page you are reading.
• Over-engineering is a phase every developer goes through. The impulse to add a database, an auth system, and an admin panel to a personal site is the impulse to build what is interesting rather than what is needed. The cure is deployment: once you deploy and realize nobody logs into your admin panel except you, and you update content once a month, the database becomes obviously unnecessary. Ship first, simplify after.
• The project blog you are reading was composed through conversation between Brett Owers and Claude Code in a single session. Every entry reflects real recollection from real projects, synthesized into lessons and insights through collaborative dialogue. This is the future of content creation: human memory and perspective + AI structure and articulation = output that neither could produce alone.
• brettowers.com is not the destination. It is the map. Every link points somewhere deeper — into the Potatuhs ecosystem, into a project's live deployment, into an App Store listing, into an Amazon book page. The site succeeds not by keeping visitors here but by sending them into the world it connects to.