An odd and somewhat obvious thing to write about for my 10th or so post, most of my earlier posts are bringing my portfolio over to this website. But since I’ve moved to WordPress I might as well make some more personal blogs about random WIP projects, including this website! A website is never complete, it’s always WIP! So let’s talk about the earlier iteration I scrapped recently.

When I set out to make my website for my school portfolio class, I decided I wanted to do something super cool and not at all detrimental, doing it all in raw HTML and CSS, I learned CSS because of SpaceHey and wanted to try my hand at a full site, and I wanted control over everything to avoid the bloated pitfalls of the modern web. For who better than I, some guy with zero web design experience, to know exactly what and what not to put on a website that those web designers made by professionals with years of experience like Wix. God, I’m such a Linux user…

Sarcasm aside, I do still appreciate the amount of specific control raw web coding gives you over every element of your website, it allowed for me to channel my graphic designer sense in a way I hadn’t in a while. I think I program better visuals than I do draw them. The issue is, of course, updating a raw HTML site is a pain. I knew it was going to be a pain. But I really overestimated my patience to go through that kind of pain every time I wanted to update the site. Trying to deconstruct the insane choices you made and forgot about while designing and how the CSS all works so you know what div classes to wrap stuff in and retrofitting everything to work with new content. It takes a while and I wasn’t motivated to do it past the class.

WordPress seems to be a happy medium between the kind of malleability of raw code and minimal feeling I was going for, and the modern convenience of web editors. The way you can integrate HTML and CSS so easily, and how much it can elevate your site, means it’s a skill I’m still very glad I took the time to hone.

I’m very happy with how so many elements from my old site just slotted in here just perfectly. Specifically the way I wrapped all my content in a Carrd like block, not entirely natural to WordPress, as far as I know at least, but I accomplished it by literally just adding the old div classes to the top and bottom of the site templates and copy pasting the CSS, and voilà. Fit like a glove. I’ve always been a fan of sites that are not overpowering and don’t take up your whole screen. I like to keep it minimal. Like a pamphlet. Plus I get to do my cool aurora borealis thing with the background, and that naturally looks slick on mobile.

If you want to check out the old version of my site, you can here.