Happy Ten-Day Web-aversary!
Okay, so technically, it's day eleven, but I've been busy this week and haven't had the chance to do a whole lot on here, so let's just pretend, shall we?
To kick off the new section and celebrate our first week live, I thought I'd talk about setting up, getting some code going, and writing my first few content sections!
The very first step, before even making my site, was to peruse other's webpages. There's so many cool things that people are doing with their sites; in my mind any blog was going to look somewhat like this--nav bar, side bar, content--but poking my nose around other pages has really inspired me for ways this site can develop in the future! Obviously, being still pretty fresh to coding, something like that wasn't super reasonable for v1, but it has definitely been inspiring!
I wound up stuck on Zonelets for a really long time, watching and rewatching the tutorials, reading everything I could, and trying to see if that would work for me. I think if it had been, I wouldn't have pondered it for nearly as long, probably would have set up my site and taken off running the day I found it, but in my heart I knew that 1. it wasn't going to have the capabilities to do what I wanted to do, and 2. tweaking and tearing into that code wasn't going to teach me nearly as much as starting with a blank slate would.
So August 19th, 2024, I said fuck it and just made my site.
Finally biting the bullet on this on a busy Monday morning was an interesting choice of mine, but I work fast under pressure, so within the hour, I had something. On my first draft of this entry, I had been lamenting the fact that I wished I had a screenshot to put here of what my site looked like during that first day and spent some time describing it, but it occurred to me just moments ago that I likely did have a screenshot, and y'know what:
It's funny how being excited about starting a new project leads to you talking about it and leaving some sort of a paper trail, isn't it? Anyway, the point of day one was just to get my site looking like it was a work in progress, much like making a new social media account and quickly filling out the bio and changing your profile pic so people know you're not a bot. Staking my claim, priming my canvas!
Day two was far more exciting on the webdev front, and far more stressful for literally everything else (you can read more about my phone troubles here). Despite spending most of the day out trying to get everything sorted, I actually was able to get a good bit of website work in! I had a very unclear image of what I wanted my site to be in my head, so getting some framework sketched out was a top priority for me (see right). She's basic, but she's also easily achievable! Which is a really good first goal to have as a chronic quitter. I figured that, if I can get to posting within the first week of having the site, I'm far more likely to actually wanna stick with it, and, so far, that seems to be holding true!
So the rest of day two for me was spent laying out the basics! I don't think I even had pages made that day, just the nav bar, side bar, and main content space.
With my phone troubles continuing and nothing to do about them until Thursday, I spent a LOT of time on day three working on my site. It was a really nice distraction to have during a slow work day, where I usually spend time surfing social media or listening to something on my phone while I dink around on the computer. Day three came with finishing my nav bar by implementing a drop down, filling out my about me page, and writing my first blog post! I also was able to find these cute fonts to use :D
And that kind leaves us here! I had been planning on doing more work on stuff, but between getting my new phone set up and preparing for this week and celebrating my dad's birthday, the last week or so has fallen into kind of a blur. Too busy to sit down and work on stuff, too tired during my free time to want to. Until today! >:D
I think for next steps, I want to tinker with my nav bar more, get some real documentation going on that, and finally get my home page cleaned up. I'd like to add some sort of a guest book since I think they're really cute and that was one of the things my brother said I should add, but I'm unsure how difficult that will be to set up. We'll see! There's plenty of places to go from here, and I'm excited to see where the road takes us! :D
Posted August 30th, 2024, around 11am