Tools for Adding Content
October 3rd, 2019
It seems a common first post for a new blog is a “making your own” how-to. To all of you out there: thank you!!! It helped me immensely while starting my own website. Here’s a collection of my favorite tools / documentation / information sources so far.
This is intended to be a ‘working page’ I can update with new finds - but I promise to add, not modify.
Getting Started: choosing a platform and layout
There’s a LOT of options out there for creating your own blog or website. You can even host it yourself. I chose to host it on GitHub with Jekyll (a popular choice). GitHub allows a personal website per account and an additional site per project.
As you decide how to host your site, you need to consider if you want to create your own layout, use ready-made formatting, or customize an available template. Because of its extensive documentation (and clean look) I went with Minimal Mistakes. I decided to fork the project to allow for maximal customization.
Customizing Pages
Changing colors and choosing pictures was a lot of fun for me. You can be very precise by specifying colors in html color codes. I found a great website that will even suggest color collections for building a theme.
My first few splash pages were scans of my own artwork. When I started, I had designs hanging on my wall ready to go. Obviously creating something new every time I wanted to create a new page isn’t sustainable. Luckily there’s plenty of fun, interesting, and free photographs avilalable. So far I’ve been enjoying Unsplash.
When I started, I didn’t think about the size of my images until my site took forever to load. Turns out, there’s a recommended number of pixels to keep pages loading fast without losing resolution. I usually shoot for 1200 pixels wide and 500-600 pixels wide for my splash (header) photos. I even found a website that gives me plenty of control over rotation, cropping, and pixel count.
Adding Content
Markdown is a stream-lined syntax compared to HTML; you can also add HTML tags to your Markdown if you like. It’s also supported by a variety of other editors like Reddit, and JIRA.