A Site for Sore Eyes
February 26, 2016
I have been coding for: 9 weeks
My website is, for now, complete! Designing my own site allowed me to revive an artistic/creative side that hasn't been utilized in a long time. Through tinkering around with CSS properties to make everything perfect, I realized this type of coding really fits within my detail-oriented nature. It allowed me to get super precise using selectors to affect behavior of highly specific HTML elements on my pages. Before I realized it, hours went by as I tried to perfect one tiny aspect of my site. Out of all of the challenges in Phase 0, working on my website led me down the most (and most time consuming) rabbit holes - but I didn't mind! When I showed off my site to friends and family, I had to explain to them how DIFFICULT it is to actually do all of this from scratch. "Nobody does this anymore!", "People cheat and use templates or online tools!"" I'm not sure if they actually got it...but I'm still proud I've actually built something.
I had so much fun doing this and truly got excited when I implemented a new feature within the design and saw it play out on the page. Every time I look at someone else's website, or other websites I admire, I get new ideas and become eager to implement the, myself. I had to keep in mind, however, that my preferences weren't the only ones that mattered. Putting my site out to my cohort-mates helped me learn what was more appealing universally. I received feedback that some of my color choices or animations were too subtle, so I quickly made some tweaks. It's awesome to me that website design is so dynamic and fluid. This means that I can implement changes, update, and refresh it at any point! There will never be a static, finished product.
In thinking about the rise of CSS template sites like Bootstrap and Jekyll, I wonder how many developers are hired for CSS and HTML skills alone these days. Because so many people can create websites on their own using a variety of tools, I imagine you'd have to be a pretty incredible designer to design websites using vanilla CSS. Still, this challenge opened my eyes to the possibility of doing front-end, user-facing work. Now, I just have to make sure I don't completely neglect my site throughout Phases 1, 2, and 3!