ConnectHV is a solo project designed and built by Jordan Koschei.
The site is built using Laravel, a PHP framework with a Hudson Valley connection. It uses Tailwind CSS for styling and Alpine.js for certain on-page interactivity.
The site is hosted on DigitalOcean and deployed using a CI/CD process managed by Laravel Forge. Additional cloud services include AWS S3 for storage.
The ConnectHV blog is powered by Ghost.
The primary serif typeface is Lora, and the primary sans-serif is Inter. The main considerations for this choice was readability and attractiveness, and the fact that both are free and open source.
The color palette is inspired by the Hudson Valley's natural beauty, with a focus on the colors of the region's flora and fauna. I'm not a color theory guy (despite being a professional product designer!) so I've leaned heavily on the well-balanced palettes provided by Tailwind CSS.
Inspired by my love of aerial footage and a desire to showcase the Hudson Valley's natural beauty, I've used a lot of drone footage in the design.
I started out the project writing in VSCode, but lately have been using Cursor for its deep integrations with AI tools.
I use Claude and ChatGPT for research, docs summarization, and code generation. Crucially, these are all things I'm already skilled at, so I'm able to use AI as an accelerant and "intern" rather than a replacement for net-new things I couldn't possibly evaluate the quality of.
I use Figma for design and prototyping, though lately I've been designing directly in code.