Why hello there!
Welcome!
This is the first post of my redesigned site.
It’s been quite an ordeal, but a rewarding one!
How did I get here? Well, I had to ask myself a lot of questions. The answers to which I can now provide…myself.
Q: How do I stop paying a ton of money to host a basic website?
- Pay for a domain, but host for free through GitHub Pages.
Q: How do I transfer my domain to a new registrar?
- Browse your new registrar’s knowledgebase!
Q: How (the hell) do I build a website from scratch these days?
- Learn a new language—especially one that might help your technical writing career.
- Download Atom. Be fortunate enough to have a patient colleague show you the ropes.
- Alternatively, read the Atom Flight Manual.
Q: Cool stuff. But what the hell is Jekyll? What’s a gem?
- Yeah, that stuff is confusing. Keep at it, dude. (Oh, and try not to fuck with Ruby on both Windows and macOS before you know what you’re doing. Or do, but I hope you have a stress reliever handy. Know and love your terminal.)
- Once your migraine has stopped, install Ruby and Git to your machine. Follow Mike Dane’s Jekyll tutorials to get a basic blog template running locally.
Q: OK, I think I get it. I can run a local server of my Jekyll site (!), but how do I push it to GitHub? (Also, please explain what a Git is.)
- Oh boy. Start with a basic understanding of Git. GitHub’s “Hello World” tutorial is a huge help. You’ll learn about branches, forking, inits, pull requests and repos.
- Feeling accomplished? Use the GitHub Pages crash course to create your first GitHub-hosted website.
- Then, follow your registrar’s documentation to create a CNAME file for your domain in your GitHub repo while also creating A Records in your DNS settings to link GitHub to your domain. (Wow! I can’t believe how jargony and cool you just sounded! [Right? I’m really impressed with us!])
Now would you believe, even after all that work, this website isn’t even close to being done? It’s not.
After these numerous, but small, victories, I need to:
- Redesign the blog. The stock template isn’t doing it for me.
- Add content. You know: my resume, my portfolio—the fun stuff.
- Figure out how to post my photographs. I want to use this site to show off!
I’ll keep updating as I make progress on the above. I’m doing this to learn as much as I can about development without actually becoming a developer.
Thanks for reading! You won’t find me on social media (yeah, you literally can’t @ me), but you can always see what I’m up to over at Silicon Sasquatch.
– Aaron
