Yesterday, I said I planned to take a few days off from working on the website. But like an addiction, I can't help myself. It's like an itch that I can't scratch. I need help.
I got the homepage set up somewhat the way I wanted. It will look familiar if you've ever visited a WordPress blog. That isn't a coincidence. I love WordPress; it's just so damn bloated. That's the whole reason this site exists. I'm attempting to emulate the software but with only the features that I need.
I was going to start with a headless WordPress install and build off that, but I ultimately decided to open up a text editor and start from scratch. I do enjoy coding, so this way feels much better.
Working with your code without worrying about how to hook into someone else's code for essential functions is much easier. I know every line of code on this site like the back of my hand, making doing everything much more manageable.
I love editing the website live. It used to scare the hell out of me if I took the site down with a screw-up. But I don't really get that rush as much as I once did. This site only gets a few visitors daily, and none are reading this blog. So the threat of taking the site down is not a big deal.
I've been thinking about doing this the right way, working on the site on my local host, and updating the site once a day with the new edits. That's how you are supposed to do it, to begin with. It's a hassle moving everything around. So I'm not entirely sold yet.
I have been using Visual Studios a bit more lately for formatting code. If you are a programmer, I'm sure you can understand just how messy my code looks after constant edits and going back and forth trying to get things functional. At the end of the day, it is barely readable. So I will drop the code in VS and format it, then copy and paste it back to the server.
I use Dreamhost for my hosting, and they have a nice setup for working with your files. It even checks syntax on CSS. But there is no support for other languages that I know of. That is another good reason for using VS for my primary coding. I've spent enough time hunting down curly brackets that it would have paid for itself to use VS.
With my long-term plans for my three websites, I think I'll get everything set up to work the right way. Better to do it now than later.
