BiotechMineThe first chapter.

BiotechMine began as a Blogger-hosted website on a custom domain. The idea was straightforward: make biotechnology notes easier to find, with a clear path from a subject to a topic to the material itself.

As I added sequence utilities and bioinformatics calculators, the site started becoming something more useful than a collection of articles. It also started testing the limits of the original architecture.

Blogger handled publishing, but interactive tools called for more control over shared components, styling, and backend execution.

• Repeated interface work. Each new page required manual HTML and JavaScript, making it harder to keep the experience consistent.
• Limited control over the platform. The CMS constrained global styling and the UI patterns I could reuse across tools.
• A split application. Without a native backend layer, tool logic either grew inside the frontend or moved to a separate Python backend.
• More features, more maintenance. Each addition created another code path to maintain, which made iteration more involved.

Continuing to patch the publishing setup would leave the same structural constraints in place. The next version needed a cohesive application: reusable UI components, proper backend workflows, and room for a broader learning experience.

Building the first version clarified what the platform needed. Content organization still mattered, but tools, practice, and data workflows needed an application stack built around them.

• Start small. A simple publishing platform can make the first version tangible without a large initial architecture.
• Make the interface reusable. Shared components help new features feel like part of the same product.
• Keep the system coherent. A unified approach to frontend and backend work makes future changes easier to reason about.