Mary Seph's Digital Garden

Designing My Dream Website (Part 4): Putting the Basics Together

Last updated: 28 minutes ago

Previous: Designing My Dream Website (Part 3): The Foundations

Last post of the day. I hope I can get something to work with by the end.

Links! Too many links! Maybe I'll play around with the icon for the home page link.

Oh no, where's the RSS? It should be somewhere in the homepage and nav and/or footer, ahhhh.

Okay, let's not crash out quite yet.

Home

An introduction. A welcome. So far I haven't written one that's satisfied me.

Both of my websites ended up being a list of latest posts.

Okay... okay, I'll really just to what I want. Before color schemes, before definitions, before tools, comes the text. I really want to make the website I outlined. No need to think of audience or reputation. This endeavor is purely self-indulgent. Apparently people do appreciate that way more than bland, polished products.

So, at the moment, I think this home page will include and introduction and links to other sections.

If the footer is too cluttered, I'll add the webrings, buttons, and badges to a sidebar. I would like to add some status log as well.

Another element I had completely forgotten was the microblog. I do microblog! I mean, linkblog! I might use my status.lol account for this, as well as to share new posts to the Fediverse.

I could also link my pixelfed account.

So, we got a sidebar with,

About

Ah, the about page. I haven't gotten the hang of it quite yet.

Frankly, I don't want to think about this right now. Moving on!

Crafts

Now for the fun part! Fancy CSS, creativity! FIBER CRAFTS!!!!

I think I'll have two to three sections, Crochet, Sewing, and Mixed. I have this page somewhat coded.

While I'm looking forward to designing this section, I'm not looking forward to catching up with some projects and taking pictures.

I should add the latest craft + image on the homepage. Maybe on the sidebar?

In other words,

Blog

A good ol' weblog. It will show all posts.

Now that I think about it, I have some posts that were a casual reflection on the events in my life between entries. They started as part of the /now page, then I move them into /journal. I might move them to the blog and create a special tag for them. Perhaps Monthly Notes? Similar to Week Notes but for the month? Although I like the idea of adding to /now but I moved it because having everything in the same page made it difficult to navigate.

I have a couple of subcategories for my posts that I may or may not keep.

Others would be,

Maybe I'll add a list of the latest five blog posts on the home page.

Portfolio

Folio oh portfolio, another headache. If I want to respect the spirit of fun and whimsy, I must go with my gut.

I believe I created some categories. One for writing such as essays and papers, another for graphics like posters and presentations, and other for multimedia like StoryMaps and maps.

Making a portfolio as a generalist is difficult because most porfolio I have seen are mono-discipline. Showcasing web projects, writing, or anything inside a single area. This is one of the reasons I have been struggling with setting up a portfolio because I haven't found examples to follow.

Thus,

Contact

A simple page with links. Extremely short page.

With the homepage sidebar taking the community elements, here's what's left for the footer.

Honestly, I have no further comments about this.

Misc. Nuts and Bolts

Other pages like /slashes will be findable through the sitemap on the footer.

Sections like media journal, media notes, and digital garden will be outside the initial scope of this website.

If I continue to write another post tomorrow or the day after, it might be about style (CSS) and/or technical details. Otherwise, I might go ahead and begin sketching this website in Markdown through Obsidian.

#blog