The Backbone of a Website: Weeks 1 and 2 of Building and Uploading My Website
Throughout this month I have decided to build my own website from scratch using HTML and to host it myself. I am doing this so that I can learn basic HTML and CSS and demonstrate my knowledge of computer networking.
Week 1 and 2 Goals
By the end of the first two weeks, I wanted to learn HTML and CSS, which are coding languages for building a website, and build a basic website based on what I learned.
Problems and Solutions
Learning
The first problem I faced was the fact that I had never built a website in HTML before. I started off by watching this video which gave me a basic understanding of the steps I needed to take to start. Despite this video helping me at least get started, I still rand into some problems that the video didn’t address. I ended up finding this awesome website to help me with more specifics problems such as formatting my background image.
Mobile Optimization
When I started my website I was not thinking about optimization for mobile use, and it wasn’t as appealing as the desktop version. The boxes and text did not look good when switching to a mobile resolution. In order to fix this problem, I had to look up how to make a website responsive and fix all of my code.
Custom Fonts
Another problem I faced was adding fonts to my website. I had a font that I really liked and wanted to use for my name at the top of the page, but when I referenced the font file it wouldn’t change the font. The solution I found was a website called Font Squirrel. They had a font generator that converts any font file and turned it into an HTML
Progress
- I started and finished the basic HTML code
- I added logos instead of text for Medium, Crash, and Twitter
- I added custom fonts in CSS
- I added a custom picture for the background with CSS
- I made my site responsive as to make it compatible on mobile devices
What I’m working on next
Next week I will be working on small edits to the HTML and CSS code as well as choosing and setting up a virtual private server. This will involve research and learning the command line to install applications.
