my projects > this website
building this website from scratch
I decided I would like to keep a record of myself and what i'm doing, a place to write about myself, my projects, and the like. My own website seemed like the perfect idea, but just copying a template or paying for a service didn't feel very in the spirit of someone who enjoys coding. So I learned how to do it myself.
what i used:
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- Tailwind
Before I started making this website, I knew I was throwing myself off the deep end. I did one web development module in university and we only used basic HTML, CSS and Javascript. Safe to say React and Tailwind really threw everything I thought I knew out of the window right away (and I'm glad it did).
I built the app using the T3 Stack minus all the database or auth bits and pieces that I didn't think I'd need. Was there a better way to do it? I don't know yet, probably. But it consolidated everything I knew I wanted to use into one place just to help me start out.
how i learned
I started off learning by following the incredibly helpful introduction to Next.js - this helped me to understand the 'normal JavaScript' -> React -> Next.js pipeline, and why I would even bother using a framework. There was a really good demo about building your own little Next.js blog - perfect for me, that's kind of what I was going for. I also looked at open-source code for more involved websites that I thought were well-designed, one of them being alveussanctuary.org.
Their website is WAY too overkill for anything I needed to do, but I still learned a huge amount just by looking at how the code is layed out. I started to really understand the importance of components, then using them for things like the navbar and footer.
the difficulties
Given that I didn't need to do anything revolutionary, the whole process has been a lot of fun so far, and pretty pain-free. I'm still fighting with the CSS every so often to get things where I want them, but Tailwind has made it so much easier to stay in a good workflow than in my previous experiences.
what i'm doing next
My main focus at the beginning was just to make something functional and relatively nice to look at. I think I achieved that goal, but there are still many things I'd like to try, like different CSS animations to make things feel a bit less static. With enough time I'd also like to make the layout as responsive as possible - it does pretty well with different screen sizes for the most part, but it still needs a bit of fine tuning.
Aside from that, I will probably separate the 'about' page into different pages as I'd love to say more on the topics, but right now it feels a bit cluttered. The same goes for the projects here. I want to make them a bit more detailed, as well as add some more as time goes on.