GO BACK
I finally decided to just switch the DNS over, call it live, and sort out the remaining issues.
So, what did I have issues with? The main thing I had issues with was completely ditching a CSS framework and coming up with a custom CSS Grid to use on the site. This was something that I really wanted to do, and a driving force behind the whole rewrite. This caused random issues with spacing and rotation on mobile, basically things I haven’t really had to deal with since before the time the CSS frameworks did all that stuff in boilerplate. 😁 I really didn’t want to use Bootstrap or anything on it. The only one I was considering was Tailwind, but I’m the end, I didn’t want to waste more time figuring out all the tailwind classes either.
No CSS framework it is!
I’ll basically spend some time sifting through this thing and improving random bugs. I also decided to use gulp to compile my SCSS. I haven’t used Gulp in a few years and found out that version 4 changed a bunch of stuff. I didn’t really want to use Webpack, as I was trying to be as minimal as possible in my build configuration, and I feel I wasted too much of my life already configuring Webpack before it started being included in all the CLIs around 2016 or so. What a horrible time that was, spending more time getting your build tools to function than actually writing what you were supposed to be writing, I don’t miss that at all.
I still need to sort out pagination with posts coming from multiple files. It’s something I’ll deal with as I get more posts on here and deem it a necessity.
I decided to also implement a dark mode feature on here when I was about 85% done with the site.
I should have thought of that earlier. I basically wanted to figure out how to do it without using a SPA framework to hold the state. After some searching, and trial and error, I figured out how to save the dark mode prefs in localStorage so it sticks on page refresh, and make the mode be dark by default if light mode isn’t specified. Kinda cool, at least I was excited about it. I haven’t really used localStorage on a multi-page before, so at least I learned something! It’s definitely not something to spark up a conversation with a stranger about though.
The other fun feature I ended up incorporating to the site was a way to search blog posts.
I wasn't initially sure how to do this with a static generator framework. How would I search static pages and get dynamic results? There are paid options with free tiers out there that I found, one of those was Algolia. I opted to have a small Vue app on the blog archive page, and use Eleventy to generate a searchable .Json file out of the collection. Vue then uses this file to filter through the results. Kinda fun! It's basically a ripped apart and modified version of the search on the Seven theme for Eleventy.
I haven’t really decided if I’m going to implement Netlify CMS on it or not. It’s not something I totally need on here, as I’m kind of enjoying the workflow of updating it with a combination of Apple Notes and WorkingCopy on my iPad or phone so far. I am in the midst of building a client site using the JAMStack and Netlify CMS at the moment though. I might possibly go through a switch things over to the CMS after I’m done with that.
I’m pretty happy with it overall though, even if I know I still have things to sort out. I do feel I will enjoy writing on this platform, and it will occupy some time I would have wasted on a social media platform!