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My website is ugly because I made it

goodinternetmagazine.com

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Re: My website is ugly because I made it

#11

Post by yoz-y »

donatj wrote: post #2

Hah, yes! Whereas most of my developer friends have long ago moved to off-the-shelf Hugo or Jekyll templates for their personal sites, I stubbornly maintain my blog with entirely bespoke css and a backend only a parent could love. For me, the joy is not in having a website, the joy is in building the website. Why would I want to hand off the joyful part? It's like maintaining a classic car. You can buy a reliable dec…

My argument to moving to a SSR is that I just spent all the time tweaking the backend. Now I can spend more time writing and tweaking just the theme.

Re: My website is ugly because I made it

#12

Post by neepi »

kapitanjakc wrote: post #4

I don't have a personal site yet. But when I do, I plan to make it with HTML+CSS+JS/JQ only Maybe apache or nginx as webservers host it on shared stuff or AWS free tier I just need to figure out how to center a div, and then I'll be in the business.

AWS free tier. S3+cloudfront has cost me $0.00 for the last year. This is incidentally the best price.

My (single page) personal site is HTML+CSS (no JS) based on a template generated by ChatGPT because I don't give a crap. Trying to make something that works on a mobile device and desktop is beyond my meagre skills. This worked fine.

Re: My website is ugly because I made it

#13

Post by jasir »

The current one looks quite nice to me, of course that's subjective :D The lighter lines on the home page are a bit harder to read, but if you consider it as a canvas to explore (i.e. click on random things) instead of an toc/index to find a specific page from, it's fun and serves the purpose.

I liked the heading fonts on the pages, "Austin News" according to Firefox. But then I looked it up for future use but it starts at 350$, so a bit steep for me :D

I used to have https://zaeem.dev/eye/ as my homepage for years, no text at all. Until I remade the site this year.

Re: My website is ugly because I made it

#14

Post by donatj »

yoz-y wrote: post #11
donatj wrote: post #2

Hah, yes! Whereas most of my developer friends have long ago moved to off-the-shelf Hugo or Jekyll templates for their personal sites, I stubbornly maintain my blog with entirely bespoke css and a backend only a parent could love. For me, the joy is not in having a website, the joy is in building the website. Why would I want to hand off the joyful part? It's like maintaining a classic car. You can buy a reliable dec…

My argument to moving to a SSR is that I just spent all the time tweaking the backend. Now I can spend more time writing and tweaking just the theme.

But did you enjoy tweaking the backend?

Re: My website is ugly because I made it

#15

Post by cuu508 »

donatj wrote: post #9
kapitanjakc wrote: post #4

I don't have a personal site yet. But when I do, I plan to make it with HTML+CSS+JS/JQ only Maybe apache or nginx as webservers host it on shared stuff or AWS free tier I just need to figure out how to center a div, and then I'll be in the business.

I've never understood the whole centering a div meme. width: 60%; // define your width as desired margin: 0 auto; Now go start your blog!

Now center div with unknown height vertically :-)

And no cheating by using flexbox!

Re: My website is ugly because I made it

#16

Post by arp242 »

cuu508 wrote: post #15
donatj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood the whole centering a div meme. width: 60%; // define your width as desired margin: 0 auto; Now go start your blog!

Now center div with unknown height vertically :-) And no cheating by using flexbox!

^ Comment flagged for sadomasochism.

Re: My website is ugly because I made it

#17

Post by Arisaka1 »

This article reminded of the days when building anything wasn't driven by neither the fear of being judged or the need to impress a future employer, but because I just felt like it.

I think there's a lack of kind of approach in general. There's a time and place when you build because the end goal is your client or boss, but it's ultimately the inner itch of experimentation that shapes your skillset and taste.

Re: My website is ugly because I made it

#18

Post by mcdonje »

The pic of the ugly site looks like it's full of blog posts, but this post is on a different site for some reason.

I would've rather been sent to the ugly site if it doesn't have marketing cookies and a membership popup.

Re: My website is ugly because I made it

#19

Post by BlackLotus89 »

mcdonje wrote: post #18

The pic of the ugly site looks like it's full of blog posts, but this post is on a different site for some reason. I would've rather been sent to the ugly site if it doesn't have marketing cookies and a membership popup.

If you look at the screencap you see a mail to hello@taylor.town.

My first instinct was the same as yours so hf visiting https://taylor.town/

Edit: after posting this the taylor.town site became much slower - so maybe that's the hn hug of death gripping again

Re: My website is ugly because I made it

#20

Post by AndrewStephens »

I am so into this philosophy. My web site is an expression of me and no-one else. If someone tells me it looks ugly or non-professional (I have heard both, although my site is not so weird as this one) I can tell them that I like it that way.

We need more of this kind of non-conformity on the web - and in general.

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