Basics, routed regrets, knowing myself
Make Out Loud ♪ coding ♪ design
I added a couple of projects just to see what kind of content and informational structures start to appear. As expected, it makes this place creaky and wild. While I’m confident in my decision here to build everything from scratch, I definitely had a moment where I was like, why didn’t you just use a blog out of the box, you absolute fool?
Well, I know why. I loathe using most things out of the box. Like all things, this is both a virtue and a huge personal failing in my life. I want things to work exactly the way I want them to work, and I like to do it myself. It’s one of the reasons I started making my own clothes, or why I always design and build everything from scratch.
I don’t want to conflate this with some blanket insistence on originality. I’m often using existing ideas or choosing the right tool for the job. When I knit, I usually knit from pattern (but I’m now very comfortable modifying), and when I build, I of course rely on frameworks (like Astro, for this whole endeavor).
There is no one to please or serve here, so I really am doing this exactly the way I want to. I’m fully letting the content shape what I design and it feels old, it feels familiar.
Architecture revision
Behold, the most basic sitemap on the planet. I’m not entirely sure what goes on the home page yet—do I want all updates, regardless of project? I like the idea of this being information, too: seeing how often I worked on what project, at a glance.
Thinking about this also makes me consider who exactly this site is serving. My inclination is to make it useful to me primarily, and then if it makes sense to others that’s great. This is really just going to be a diary/stream of consciousness, I guess. RIP lol
Either way, updates should be filed away into larger projects, though having universal tags is a must.
So in addition to this architecture, a view binary emerges:
- By project
- By chronology
I’d also really like to have a “completed” or “filed away” state, so if you come to some random project mid-swing, it will look different from something I finished. I’m hoping to actually make short presentations for finished projects that can sit at the top.
With all of this in mind, I’m going to put together some to-do’s. Actually, it could be cool for those to-do’s to live on the project index page. Let me just go ahead and make that happen.
Additionally this makes me think I need to alter my file architecture a little. Could I make this incredibly flat, instead of making little folders for every project? like, 000-prefix-date, all in one folder? Will this get out of hand immediately? I’ve honestly never been one for folders. I blame my lack of object permanence.
I’ve specifically chosen a small, completable project in addition to this web one to put in here. I want to be able to handle both a big long project, as well as a short one.
A wild component appears!
They are ugly, but I’m starting to make a few fun components.
Before and After. As this is a process blog, I think this will be well-used. Like, maybe even each post should be about the size of 1-3 Before and Afters. I don’t know. Yagirl likes alchemy, and I don’t know what’s more old wizard alchemical than a before and after.
Feature Area. The TL;DR. This isn’t that exciting of a component to me, but it’s there.
And with all that, let’s Before/After some stuff.
Before
After
Main index
Before
After
Project page
For next time
Links are broken, I haven’t looked tags in the eye, do I even need them, not yet, I don’t, and the site continues to be hideous. Oh well!!!!! This is what we signed up for, isn’t it!