Howdy friends,

This week I want to share a small but meaningful shift in my journey of growing into a better cloud architect.

My website cloudwithalon.com is where I log my personal learning and document my journey in public.

For a long time, it lived on Hashnode. I chose Hashnode because I did not want the hassle of maintaining a website or getting distracted by constant tweaks. I just wanted to write, learn, and move forward.

And honestly, it served that purpose really well.

But recently in 2026, Hashnode updated their theme. After the change, CloudwithAlon started to feel less personal to me and more like a platform page.

That made me pause.

I also realized that if I ever wanted to migrate, doing it early would be much easier than doing it later when the site had grown much larger. So I decided this was the right time to take back full ownership.

I moved CloudwithAlon to a fully self managed website and shaped it the way I wanted it to feel.

I built the site using Pelican, a Python based static site generator. I chose it because I am comfortable with Python. The site is hosted on GitHub and deployed using Cloudflare.

Now comes the most interesting part.

I did not write a single line of code for this website.

Every part of it, the Pelican setup, site structure, theme adjustments, content migration, Markdown conversion, and even the automation scripts for adapting posts to the new setup was written entirely by Amazon Q.

My role was just thinking.

I designed and prompted. Amazon Q translated those ideas into code.

As I kept thinking, I added one more feature.

The site now lists not only my articles but also all my Substack posts, including the one you are reading right now. The goal is to make CloudwithAlon a central hub for my entire public learning journey.

This was done using a simple Python script that generates HTML files during the build process.

I really wanted to share the full prompt history from Amazon Q, but unfortunately I deleted it.

What I learned

This project taught me a lot.

I have been leveraging AI heavily for some time, but this project helped me understand what prompt engineering really means. It is not about clever prompts. It is about clear thinking and knowing the outcome you want.

Writing code is not the hardest part. Clear thinking is.

I also learned that AI works best when you stay at the right abstraction level. Breaking problems down step by step and guiding the flow produces much better results than asking for everything at once.

Migrating a website is not simple if you want it to be future ready. I had to think about URL structure, redirection, page structure, content organization, and SEO. All of this requires proper planning so the site can grow while staying flexible for future features.

Most importantly, this project reminded me that even small personal projects can teach real architecture lessons, because you are forced to make every decision yourself.

This migration was not just a technical move. It was a mindset shift.

CloudwithAlon will continue to be my personal space on the internet. A place to think clearly, learn in public, and slowly build long term online presence.

As I move further into 2026, I plan to be more intentional about showing up online, writing more, and sharing what I am learning along the way.

If you are also building something, I would love to hear your story.

Until next week,
Alon

PS — A few quick updates

• I was on a week long remote work trip and will share that experience in the next episode.