System Architecture

An overview of the hardware, network routing, and software stack powering this self-hosted portfolio.

The Stack

Edge & Routing

DNS and edge caching are handled by Cloudflare, masking a dedicated Static IP. Inbound traffic is securely routed using Nginx Proxy Manager for SSL termination and reverse proxying.

Web Server

The site is served using a bare-metal Apache2 web server configured to serve static, flat-file HTML and CSS directly from the file system for zero-latency TTFB (Time to First Byte).

Hardware Specifications

This entire infrastructure is self-hosted and runs 24/7 on a single-board computer located on-premises.

Machine	Raspberry Pi 5
Architecture	64-bit ARM Cortex-A76 (Quad-core @ 2.4GHz)
Memory	8GB LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM / 8GB Swap
Storage	500GB NVMe SSD
Network Uplink	1 Gbps Local Ethernet Switch → 500 Mbps ISP Uplink
Operating System	Debian / Raspberry Pi OS

Performance & Optimizations

This site is brutally optimized for speed and minimalism. It intentionally avoids modern, heavy JavaScript frameworks in favor of raw performance.

Zero Dependencies	No React, Vue, or heavy libraries. The UI is built entirely with vanilla HTML5 and CSS3.
System Typography	Zero external font requests. The site relies exclusively on native OS fonts (`system-ui`, `ui-serif`) eliminating layout shifts and font-loading latency.
Visuals	No heavy background images. The matte grain texture is generated dynamically via a microscopic inline SVG data URI.

Site Map & Services

`/` (Root)	Main directory / Social link tree.
`/projects`	Engineering portfolio grid.
`/projects/hytrack3`	Individual project showcase pages.
`uptime.nickcardoso.com`	Live infrastructure health tracking powered by Uptime Kuma.