Over the last few weeks, I’ve been diving into the world of cloud computing through the popular Cloud Resume Challenge. This project is my first hands-on attempt at building something real in the cloud—and even though it’s still a work in progress, I’ve learned a ton and I’m excited to share what I’ve done so far.

Why I Started
I'm currently making the leap into IT after spending several years in a different field (military aviation maintenance, to be specific). While I’ve been studying cloud computing through my bachelor’s degree and earning CompTIA certifications, I wanted to take it a step further and apply what I was learning in a practical, visible way. That’s where the Cloud Resume Challenge came in.

The Goal
The idea behind the project is simple on paper: build and deploy a personal resume website using cloud technologies. But when you dig into it, there’s a ton of depth—frontend, backend, databases, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code. It’s been a great intro to many of the tools and concepts used in modern IT environments.

What I’ve Accomplished So Far
Here’s a breakdown of what I’ve done on my site: tyler-cloud-resume.com

✅ HTML/CSS Resume
I started by writing the core of the site—a clean, responsive HTML/CSS resume. I kept it lightweight but professional, and I learned a lot about web design basics in the process.

✅ Hosting with AWS S3 and CloudFront
I’ve deployed my static site to an S3 bucket and configured CloudFront to serve it securely via HTTPS. This part of the project really helped me understand AWS storage, permissions, and content delivery.

✅ Custom Domain and HTTPS
I registered my domain and used Route 53 to manage DNS. Setting up an SSL certificate through AWS Certificate Manager and linking it to CloudFront was a bit tricky, but it was a great intro to web security and DNS configurations.

🔄 In Progress: Visitor Counter with Lambda and DynamoDB
This is where I’m currently focused. The idea is to have a serverless backend that tracks visitors to my site. I’ve started my journey in learning Python, to eventually build a function using AWS Lambda and setting up a DynamoDB table to store the count. Next steps are testing the API Gateway integration and connecting it to my frontend using JavaScript.

🛠️ Upcoming: CI/CD Pipeline with GitHub Actions
One thing I’m eager to learn next is how to set up continuous deployment. I plan to automate the deployment of my resume site so that changes in GitHub trigger updates to the live site. I know this will be incredibly useful in any IT or DevOps role.

What I’ve Learned
Even though I’m still new to IT, this project has helped me get hands-on with cloud services and build confidence in my technical skills. I’ve learned:

How to troubleshoot and read documentation

How AWS services interact (S3, CloudFront, Route 53, Lambda, DynamoDB)

Basic web development and DNS management

The importance of planning, version control, and consistent progress

What’s Next
I’m continuing to chip away at the backend and automation parts of the challenge. I’m also looking forward to learning more about monitoring, logging, and security—especially how those are handled in real-world IT environments.

I may not have direct job experience in IT yet, but this project has shown me how to learn, adapt, and solve problems—skills I’m ready to bring to a technical support or IT operations team.

Thanks for reading! If you're curious, feel free to
check out tyler-cloud-resume.com and follow along as I keep building.