This week has been fairly productive on the coding front.
It was just slightly under two months ago when the thought came to me to actually build a website. I had admittedly toyed with the idea of doing so when I stumbled upon this post.
So I ended up creating a github account, and left it alone for a few months.
I was admittedly bored while on staycation towards the end of October, and it was at this point I decided to give making a website for my band a shot. Looking through GitHub for anything Jekyll-related, I found something that was purportedly easy to use, with little or no need for me to use a terminal. I followed the instructions closely, and soon enough, I actually had something up and running.
Getting the site to run on netlify took a bit longer to figure out, as it meant I actually had to write new bits of code, but by then, I was hooked.
I had actually created a website I could be proud of.
No, it was not exactly the flashiest, and there were features not included that I needed to learn how to create, but it actually worked properly like a real website. A couple of weeks later, I felt inspired to create another website, this time for my own personal use.
The process of fixing up the various issues from the original templates that were messing up my websites was not exactly easy. After a failed attempt at upgrading the code for the Roseburn Avenue site, I had to revisit the basics of using GitHub, and it was then the idea to hit up the various issues and pull requests from the original repositories hit me.
In other words, I had hit the motherlode of information that I would need.
I’ve been able to add tags to the Roseburn Avenue site, and impose a limit of posts that can be displayed on the home page. Similarly, I was able to fix up the navigation bar for this website so that the links embedded in the title and my avatar image could actually function.
Most people in the IT field would find this easy. As someone with minimal coding knowledge, each successful update felt like winning a prize in the lottery.
So, what’s next? Regarding my websites, I don’t really have anything planned yet, although if I do stumble upon something worth implementing, I’ll give it a shot. In the meantime, I’ve just started using monday-dot-com, and I do have a couple of minor work-related and band-related projects I have on the backburner. I also have a couple of music-related topics I will be talking about in future posts, and I’m going to attempt reviewing an academic journal magazine about education in Japan I purchased earlier this year.
Wherever you are reading this from in the world, I wish you all well.
Zach
Posted December 10th 2021 (JST)