What's going on here...?
Well, I figured it was about damn time I made myself a website. I've attempted this a few times but for several reasons, I've never gotten close to finishing (sometimes even starting).
On reflection I can break it down to a few things, one is my own damn perfectionism. I've always started designing the look and feel before doing anything else. The aim has always been to design the best developer blog/website there is straight away... well I suck at design and what does the best mean to me... even when I was designing as part of my job and thought I was good, I still sucked so I never got very far.
Then there is my stubborn pride, this is maybe the worst part. This is where I just can't bring myself to just buy a theme or template and skin it. There is some little voice in my head that makes me think I'm a terrible developer if I can't do it myself. By the way all power to developers who do use templates, I'm just a stubborn idiot and this is no reflection on you at all.
The final nail in the Sean website coffin was the technology, as much as I love vanilla HTML and CSS, it's a pain in the ass to have to manually create content pages and update recent article lists blaaah blah blah everything.
"But Sean, Why don't you use a CMS?" I hear you say.
I know there are plenty of CMSs out there, I've built heaps of sites using free and paid ones throughout my career. But when it comes to adding one to my website it's got to be super simple to get up and going. Even when I was doing the CMS set up and integration myself as part of my job and had it all down to a "fine art", any little problem when I was getting my website set up and the Sean website train derails into a firey miserable mess, followed by a massive tantrum and giving up... CHOO CHOO CRAAAAAAASH!
But now things have gotten crazy good out there, static sites are back in fashion and headless CMS is this fantastic thing that exists!
So this is me starting my personal website journey again.
How do I plan to power this site?
- 11ty as the static site generator, almost zero config which is amazing!
- SASS because I like it and wanted some more "advanced" css stuff
- Netlify and Netflify CMS as the headless CMS of choice and build and publish tool
- Github where my code will live
That's the core of this website at the moment it might change depending on what problems I have to deal with but so far so good...
What about the design?
Good question do you like it? I've gone for a minimalist approach I call it "Almost Browser Default" it's the newest design everyone will want. But in all seriousness, I'm going to keep it simple and slowly chip away. The beauty of HTML and CSS is that with some basic markup and structure I should be able to "theme" this site without too much rebuilding of the underlying markup. Plus what's more accessible than text on a page?
So keep checking in, I'm hoping to make some changes at a consistent pace. If you don't see any changes in a while maybe reach out and check in with me and make sure the Sean website train is still on the tracks..