First Steps to Web Design

What I studied

Alright, so I am still completely bad at this whole web design thing, as you can tell by the not-great theming of this website. However, I am starting to learn the basics of CSS to change things away from the default layout from Astro(we will get to this).

I last remember learning HTML back in, like, early high school (like 2005, jeez, I’m old).

I have refreshed my memory and learned some CSS skills through Codecademy. Specifically, this course. Honestly, I have liked Codecademy overall, even if the monthly price for access to paths, etc., is a bit high. I am sure there are plenty of free resources out there, but sometimes it’s worth paying for the organization and ease.

I have also been studying their JavaScript basics course as well in preparation for web apps.

How this website is built

So, this website is currently hosted using Vercel. Vercel seems to be a go-to hosting for web applications using things like Next.js, etc. Right now, it is very likely overkill to be hosting this simple blog on it, but with my plans to expand down the line as I learn, it seemed simple enough to use.

I am running this using an “Astro”-powered blog. I know almost zero about this yet. This was something ChatGPT recommended instead of using Next.js at the start. There aren’t a ton of files involved, so I think I can pick it up, but I haven’t researched into it much.

I have been modifying the CSS files to get this ugly abomination of a website, haha, but I’m sure overtime I’ll figure out the design bit.

Blog posts are interestingly written just by writing in a Markdown format (I am using Apple Notes to write this right now) and then when you drop them at a path and push to GitHub, the site just updates. Kinda cool, haven’t figured out the easiest way to post though.