After my first year in university, I realized that my online portfolio of years previous was radically out of date. I still considered it visually appealing, but the content was primarily from my third year of high school and the current hoster (webs.com) was running on such an old theme that the style profile would break half the time, revealing the ugly html backing that didn’t match the goal of the website. At one point, it was great but it fell to the bottom of the list somewhere along the line.
With the domain name contract expiring in June 2017, I realized it was time to move on.
This was the homepage of my own website. I liked the way it looked.
The first thing that I really thought about was what I was going to do. Obviously, it would be my own personal website, probably having some sort of blog that I’d occasionally want to update to show how alive I was, and be consistent in a physically appealing appearance. My primary desire with this new website was to phase out of a static user interface and to start having a more profitable structure. I narrowed down what I wanted into a simple list:
1. Simple store/more accessible commission information
2. Consistent and independent aesthetic
3. Integrated portfolio
4. Affordable hosting costs
5. Opportunities for change and growth
The more difficult question concerned with the “how”.
I decided to go with a website builder, more so because I wasn’t sure how much time I would have moving forward and I didn’t want to build up something that required a lot of maintenance. Also, I’m not confident enough with html/CSS/JavaScript/Twitter Bootstrap to even begin thinking about a plan for building up personal ecommerce. (Okay, let’s be real: I’m just too lazy to want to spend that time for something that intended to be more personal to start with.)
With how common WordPress is, I played around with it for over a month. But somewhere along the line, I realized it just wasn’t customizable the way I wanted it to be. It’s great for blogging, but I didn’t exactly want a blog.
I worked with Weebly to build up my mom’s business website (this just sort of happened, because she bought the domain name from an organization that worked exclusively with the company – please do your research beforehand everyone) and it was ok.
I had some experience with Strikingly, but wasn’t a fan of long-form, one page websites.
I hadn’t ever used Wix or Squarespace, but both are well known to be top of the line (I’ve watched the Wix advertisement on Youtube enough times to be both annoyed by it and pretty damn attracted to it as well).
If I was going to use a website builder, I knew it was going to be one of those five. The thing was, after a little rudimentary research, I once again felt the temptation to tackle things on my own. I kept of going back and forth between integrated website building/hosting and doing everything on my own. A new website would be an investment, but where would it hit me hardest? Money or time?
For what I was looking for, I’d be paying $9 - $25 a month and doing only a little bit of theme customization – the focus being on content. Making my own website would take a lot more time and I’d be focusing on learning more web development rather than content. With research, I found a couple answers to how I would do things, but it seemed like it would take so much time, and as I researched even more, would actually cost quite a bit as well (somewhere within the same range as Squarespace).
On one hand, Squarespace. On the other hand, a hodgepodge of Sublime Text, Adobe Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Muse, HostGator, and Shopify.
I spent at least 20 hours studying how to make a website from a Web Developer's perspective until my summer classes hit me - and they hit me hard. I suddenly found myself lacking the motivation for productive self initiative. But, for so many reasons, I wanted to have those coveted Web Dev skills that I had hooked myself on.
So, I came to a compromise with myself: submit to the confines of a service like Squarespace for convenience sake while exploring the wonders of Web Development through an online John Hopkins certification.
I'd finally be doing something new. Thanks for joining me on this opportunity.