How I Built My Own Website

A short while ago I wrote an article on the collection of skills I’ve been able to develop in the past year. Thanks to a recent comment, I thought it would be a good idea to explain website building a bit further. Before you read ahead, please know that I am very much an amateur ?? and have only recently been satisfied with the design of the :scale website.

Before I began, I understood the basics of putting together a website. You need a domain, hosting and a platform to build the website on. I chose WordPress because I had experimented with it previously and the interface is relatively simple for a beginner. Essentially, you create pages, write some posts, and pick from thousands of plugins to help you design the website better.

But I was far from being completely finished with the website on my first attempt. I watched many tutorials on YouTube ?? on how to do basic things like changing the font size or using a plugin like Elementor (which I totally recommend). It took hours of work to not just write good content but to make sure that it works visually on desktop and mobile. I had to sit at my desk for weeks and just experiment with how things looked. Studying Computing at A Level also meant I had a brief understanding of coding principles so it wasn't difficult to pick up CSS and search for the correct parameters.

I took feedback from several people on the look of the website and often searched for inspiration and similar websites in the same industry to understand what works and what doesn’t. I had to question myself ?, what do I want this website to do? I wanted people to be able to read the latest blog post, be able to know about who I am and why I created this platform in the first place and have access to some great resources.

Just over the last few months, I’ve been watching videos on how to make an amazing homepage. I’ve understood the importance of animation in websites, how to edit images and by far the most difficult, how to write for SEO ??. I had to look at the trending keywords in architecture like ‘tutorials’ or ‘how to draw a sun path in illustrator’ and curate my content for it so that it gets the best exposure.

But this skill is far from being mastered. There’s so much more I want to learn about such web-based applications, forums, building a newsletter and getting my website to rank ??. My advice would be to Google everything you get stuck on and read extra. It’s become very easy to set up a website with the likes of GoDaddy and Wix nowadays, but there’s an extra sense of pride I have knowing that I built this website without any pre-made template.

I also had so much fun building my online portfolio, something I reccomend people to try out even if it's just one page. Although this wouldn't be the primary content I send with my application, it can be a nice addition and demonstration of more skills that you might leave out of your CV but are still proud of ??.

What kinds of skills are you in the process of learning? Let me know in the comments and feel free to message me for any advice or the nitty gritty details if you're setting up your own website, I promise to help.