Please excuse the nature of this quick unedited post.
In case you’re wondering, my Chromebook is currently undergoing a massive upgrade that’ll enable a more recent version of Android, so I can’t exactly use it. I’m typing this up entirely on my phone, but at least I’m using a Bluetooth keyboard-trackpad combo to make things a bit easier.
I’m currently looking into updating the look for Roseburn Avenue’s website. It’s proving a bit of a hallenge, but in a good way.
As to what will be different compared to what we currently have, the website is currently built using the Jekyll site generator, powered by the likes of Ruby. The reason I decided to stick with this was because of how popular and (fairly) easy it was to use for a complete beginner. An example of this can be seen in how some pre-existing templates didn’t require you to use a command line interface terminal. Version 1 of this website also started out the same way, using the “Beautiful Jekyll” template as its base, but I’ve since rebuilt the website using the terminal to take advantage of some useful code.
Right now, the Roseburn Avenue website is based on “Jekyll Now”, which is one of those “Fork, Plug and Play” designs with zero need to touch the terminal. All you had to do was basically copy and put your own spin to pre-existing files. Simple enough. The only downside, however, was that the end product looks like a generic blog. From a coding point of view, however, it appears that the more files a Jekyll site has, the slower it may eventually become.
I’m looking into using Hugo, based on the Go programming language, to develop Version 2. While I won’t say what theme I’ using, I will say that it is definitely more visually-appealing.
The downside?
It appears that this template may be more suited as a landing page rather than a full-blown website.
I’m not backing down from the challenge, though. Knowing how challenging working with a completely new programming language can be, more so as a novice, I’ve left some notes here and there detailing my actions. If anything goes wrong, I can simply wipe all changes clean, and use my notes to hypothesise workarounds.
The best part? Since I’m going to be working on this through UserLAnd, I have a proper development environment to see the effects of any changes, even if I’m limited by the constraints of a smartphone display.
It’s still better than nothing.
(A bit of advice to anyone looking into making their own website on a single device: you just need a solid mid-range Android tablet, plus a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I’m saying this as an Apple fanboy.)