Website Planz

2024-08-04

Sup folks! Thought I'd give myself a few minutes to jot down a blog post and share my upcoming website writing plans.

I was applying to a job that mentioned web design as being a useful skill they are interested in, and it got me thinking. I've been learning HTML and CSS for a little while now (since Sept 2022) and it'd be good to have something to show prospective employers my skills. However, this is my personal site and there's no way I'd show it to an employer - heck, if you look closely you'll see links to less than legal activities... It's also just way too, well, personal to be showin' to employers. Plus, if I'm being honest, anyone who was to F12 my site, or even just try to shrink the window, would not employ me to do any web dev...

I'm also slightly feeling that I'm outgrowing Neocities, though not necessarily in the culture - in fact I feel like I need to be way more sociable when here on the 'Small Web' as a lot of the time I just edit my own site and don't interact enough with other folks' sites. More specifically I just mean Neocities editor is getting pretty annoying. I'll go into that in a moment. Don't worry, fairy-of-mokosh is not going anywhere! Let me tell you my plans...

I'm in the process of making a professional website for myself that I can share with prospective employers/ ecologists and use for irl networking, have pictures of my face etc. Like a LinkedIn but sexy and cool. I'm pursuing a career in ecology, so it'll be relevant to that. I'll have a little bio about me and my academic credentials, a page for conservation volunteering experience, a gallery of nature pics, possibly a summary of my dissertation (it's too large of a file to host I think, plus idk if I'm allowed to?) and other stuff I think of. That way I can link it to my LinkedIn and just be immediately swagger than those without cool websites.

It'll be hosted on GitHub pages and I'm using VS Code to write it. And let me just tell you...hooo boy...The process is so much smoother and sexier than neocities editor (which I'm writing this blog post in). A list of pros it has over N.E.:

• A file structure that lets you move things within it, so it's not set in stone forevermore.
• Autofilling tags and end tags instead of having to manually write li every damn time.
• Although I'm not updating the site live like this neocities one as I want it to look good before publishing it, the smoothness of GitHub pushing is sooo nice because I can edit it in VS Code and then push it to the site really fast.
• Live preview.
• A nice brown theme.

In terms of starting from scratch, it's been majorly helpful in pushing me to actually learn layouts properly rather than slapping a bunch of position: relatives in the CSS onto someone else's prefab layout and hoping for the best. I've been using CSS Grid and it's a bit of a learning curve but the new website seems more responsive to window size changes and can change shape on a skinny screen, making it more mobile compatible. It's not as hard as it was when I first starting doing a layout, which makes sense as that was probs nearly 2 years ago! Starting from scratch has also helped me with my file structure. It wasn't that bad before, but it's also just reassuring I can move things around if need be. It's nice having the site actually within my computer file system in the same way it'll be on the final site, unlike fairy-of-mokosh. I have zip file backups of fom, and files storing some images but it's only structured properly like this on the web.

I also have some long-term hopes regarding publishing a regular blog - both on the profeshy site and here. I was thinking once I've set it up, I could challenge myself to do a post a month about something ecology related on there, which would get my researchy gears moving, and something on a topic of my choice here. Not exactly sure when/ how to start this off and not set myself up for failure, but it's something I'd like to try. A long long term idea was to try reach out to fellow ecologists with personal sites and make a webring, though I feel like that's unlikely to happen before I'm actually properly integrated into the sector. I've only rlly encountered 'modern' personal sites so webrings may not be that successful or popular, though honestly where are researchers/ academics/ professionals going now that Twitter/X is dead asf?

As for this site, I have huge plans! As soon as the other site is up and running (it takes precedent as I gotta use it to get layout figured out, and it may be helpful in job applications), I'm going to do a total refurbishment here. Firstly I'll make an actually functional layout that is responsive (don't worry, it'll have the same general shape as the current one cos I like that shape). I'm going to be majorly updating the CSS - the colourscheme has got a bit old to me, so I'd like to redo it as well as the background. I plan to have one of those switches to switch between colourschemes - a new main one (blue and green maybe?), the current pink one, and a totally greyscale one. I'd also like to make a better navigation bar and make a more interesting home page. Making a site map is something I should do as I've got bits everywhere.

Ideally I'll also assess the file structure and see if I should redo that. I still want to host it on neocities for the community aspect, but if needed I could download the files, rearrange them, empty the site and reupload. I think. Also it's a must to see if there's a way of using VS Code + maybe Github w neocities because OW my hands hurt. [ok only a small proportion is the actual code but still. VS Code ftw].

I won't be linking this site to the new one, however I'm not sure if I'll make that one visible from this one. For opsec reasons it's probs not the best practice, so unfortunately perhaps not...

Anyways, that's my Website Planz for the future! See y'all soon!