From a25c36f51ba2d8912c407dc001a4b882e2b144ae Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Isaac Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2021 17:43:06 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] write blog post --- content/blog/i-have-a-blog.md | 14 +++++++++ content/blog/my-new-website.md | 55 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-- 2 files changed, 66 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) create mode 100644 content/blog/i-have-a-blog.md diff --git a/content/blog/i-have-a-blog.md b/content/blog/i-have-a-blog.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3197d45 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/i-have-a-blog.md @@ -0,0 +1,14 @@ +--- +title: "As you can see, I have a blog" +date: 2021-08-15T14:12:57+01:00 +draft: false +hero: 'https://img.eartharoid.me/insecure/pr:1080p/plain/s3://eartharoid/images/p/danist-bviex5lwf3s-unsplash.jpg@webp' +images: + - 'https://img.eartharoid.me/insecure/pr:1080p/plain/s3://eartharoid/images/p/danist-bviex5lwf3s-unsplash.jpg@webp' +# tags: +# - '' +--- + +Hey, you're reading my blog! I thought it would be cool to have a blog as part of my new website, but I didn't have any plans for the content. I thought about it a little, considered holiday diaries etc, and decided that I don't want it to be too personal, which means it will probably be developer-focused content. Maybe I'll write regularly, or maybe I'll forget about it for a while and write an occasional post about how I made something new. + +I don't think I'll use this blog for announcements for my established projects, more for general topics and new projects that may interest more of the 0 people who are going to read it. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ diff --git a/content/blog/my-new-website.md b/content/blog/my-new-website.md index 206c8ee..c74b338 100644 --- a/content/blog/my-new-website.md +++ b/content/blog/my-new-website.md @@ -1,12 +1,61 @@ --- -title: "My New Website" +title: "My new website" date: 2021-01-19T11:59:41Z draft: false # hero: '' -images: - - '' +# images: +# - '' tags: - 'websites' --- ## Why I made a new website + +I started messing with basic HTML and CSS in 2016 and I have had a home page since at least 2019, probably 2018, but it was just an [HTML5 UP](https://html5up.net/) template. Whilst it looked ok-ish, it was slow and had very little information, only some unoptimized photos (uncompressed and 4K) and links to other pages. + +Although I am writing this in August 2021, I started making this website in early January. I'd like to say that I thought I should have a somewhat professional-looking website to showcase my software and photography for potential customers, but honestly, I was just looking at static site generators (I can't remember why) and was interested by [Hugo](https://gohugo.io). A few hours later I was learning how to make my own Hugo theme (using what I now know is a disgusting template engine). + + +## Website requirements + +Despite suddenly diving in to the website creation, I had been thinking about what I want my website to look like and the features I wanted it to have for at least a year. I knew that I wanted a full-page background image to be the first thing you see on the home page, and I also wanted a hero (the section at the top with navbar and title in front of an image) on every page. + +I had thought about some features: + +- Individual pages for all of my major projects +- A blog, although I'm not sure what for +- A photo gallery + +## How it works + +I chose to create my website with Hugo and Bulma, and host it on Vercel. + +### Why I chose Hugo + +I don't really know. I had been thinking about trying Go for a while, I was looking at Hugo's website and just decided to use it. + +### Why I chose Bulma + +I have used Bulma for small things in the past so I know that it is easy to get a somewhat decent-looking website with not much effort. I learned that Bulma and themes I used (Flatly and Darkly) are not perfect though. + +### Why I chose Vercel + +I wanted fast and free hosting. I was considering using Vercel for another project and I decided it would be a good idea to test it with something easy to migrate away first. + +## The development process + +### January + +I begun creating my website in early-mid January (2021). Between the 9th and 25th January I made most of the theme and the website was ready for content. However on the 26th I started making [eartharoid go](https://github.com/eartharoid/go), leaving the website in an incomplete state with no content. + +### August + +Skip forward half a year, I had just got back from my holiday when I decided to setup my Ko-fi memberships. I then created [a blog post on Ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/post/Memberships-L3L85MG7T) announcing this. Minutes later I realised that the website I made months ago has a blog waiting to be used. + +I started (on 8th August) by writing my home and about pages. A couple of days later I was adding more to theme, including improved meta tags (social embeds), taxonomy pages, adding a contact form and lots of little changes. I then decided to replace [Imagekit](https://imagekit.io/)- the image CDN I had set up in January - with my own CDN (`static.eartharoid.me`, using Cloudfront and S3) and [image proxy](https://imgproxy.net/) (`img.eartharoid.me`, behind Cloudflare's CDN). + +## What I'd do differently next time + +I found creating my own Hugo theme very frustrating at times. Hugo's features make it look like the easy option for getting a static website running, especially one with a blog, but the template engine is awful and I found it limiting. [Hexo](https://hexo.io/) is a potential alternative which I may consider using in the future, but I think I am more likely to use [Next.JS](https://nextjs.org/). + +I don't regret using Bulma. Although I probably won't use in my next personal website, it made this website much easier and faster to create.