Hello, today I have big plans. Well, not plans for today because this is going to take a while. But I'm going to change the wesite.
I know what you're going to say: "but Manon, this site is only 5 days old!" and I'm gonna say "yeah I know". That's precisely why I'm going to change it. I spent the last 5 days putting into work what I'd learn in HTML and CSS, but now I'm realising that what I've built is not sustainable at all.
Visuals
I don't like the visual.
The font is nice and it's the one I use to read on my kobo:
it makes it easier for me to read. And I find it visually really fun. The layout on the other hand...
Well it's not great. It doesn't work really well in my opinion. It was fine to learn how to set up my website,
but it doesn't reflect me at all. It's very simple and plain. And I love complicated.
Responsiveness and accessibility
It is not responsive at all.
Something important to me is making this website as accessible as possible.
I think that accessing the indie web should be for everyone, not only for the people with a computer.
This is why my website is going to be as mobile friendly as possible. I am in the (pretty tedious) process of learning
ways to make it responsive, with the use of hamburger menus for example. So far I am having a bit of a hard time since
I am still a beginner, but it is something that shouldn't be ignored in my opinion.
Here are a bunch of features I plan on adding to the website:
- a hamburger menu for navigation
- a theme switcher with lighter and darker themes
- a font switcher to make the site more readable
- a freeze frame button
- a "skip to content" button
I will do more research on ways to make a website more accessible and add more to the list.
Complexity
It is not very complex.
One of my goals with this website is to have a project that will allow me to get better at coding. I love learning
new things, I find it thrilling to see the improvments I make with the time. However, by sticking with a basic HTML/CSS website,
I wouldn't really challenge myself. Apart from the important accessibility issues that I would fix with a little time obviously.
Using Zonelets' blog template for example, I think it looks neat but I'm not really challenging myself: I want to learn how to
build my own blog! I want to be in control of everything, add stuff like tags or a comment section (I don't know who's going to leave comments
under my silly blog posts but it's always good to leave a door open!)... I want to be able to say that I build my website myself from A to Z.
I know it's useless but it's a pride issue lol.
My goal to fix this complexity problem is to learn JavaScript and make use of it. The stage I'm at right now makes it easy to code but a pain to change my layout if I need to. Also to implement most features I'm planning for accessibility, I'm going to need JavaScript. So I'm learning. And I'm SCARED!
Another solution I'm considering is using a Static Site Generator. Eleventy looks pretty interesting and I found a few nice tutorials. However I think that would require me to start over my website from scratch but you know, it's pretty exciting? At least it's definitely going to fix the complexity issue! Maybe I'm putting a spanner into my own works by overcomplicating my first website but right now I'm running on adrenaline and an insatiable thirst for internet knowledge so...
Conclusion
Obviously, nothing is set in stone. I'm thinking very hard about my ideal layout, surfing on the web for inspiration and going down many rabbit holes on random people's personal websites, which is AMAZING and kind of the goal of it all, but also slowing down my learning process lol. I'm having so much fun with all of this and I'm really hoping I can achieve something I'm proud of.
My biggest challenge is definitely consistency. ADHD is a pain in my butt and it makes it hard for me to stay motivated
when something is not new anymore. I've picked up on
That's it for today. Thank you for reading my internet rambling. See you!