$ hugo new post/hugo.md | $ hugo server -D

So what have I learned? Is making your website from scratch a good way to learn how to program?

Short Answer? no.

Long Answer?

Well. I have learned alot from this entire experience. I literally went from Zero to Hero with this thing. Little over a month ago I bought some server space on DreamHost and told myself, “We are going to do this!” I have been wanting my own website ever since I got into programming.

I had a friend offer to set it up for me, and I know that it would have been easier (probably cheaper too) for me to just let him, but I wanted to do something on my own for once, not have people constantly hold my hand.

“For Thus said the Lord, Holding one’s hand is a sacred act, not to be shared except for in love.” BS 4:20 - 69

Plus I looked at his website and I realized how, uhhhh… Let’s just say, bare bones it was. Last time I checked he hadn’t even configured his config.toml file so it would display all his posts. Currently it has a cutoff of 15 posts and no other page lists to display more… For Shame!

So yeah! back to what I have learned so far.

First: WordPress may look cool, but BLAH!! so freaking slow. I don’t think I will ever use them to build a website. There isn’t a lot of custom abilities unless you pay them, and their website is slow as F. if you are trying to build anything, you learn literally nothing about programing except that HTML is like stacking boxes and making them move around properly for responsiveness. Not a fan. No shade to any of those WP developers out there. I have seen people do some amazing stuff with it, but I find it too slow and not challenging enough for me.

Second: Hugo is pretty damn awesome! their themes are sick, (this one is called Hugo.386) They have a huge following of programmers that are passionate about open source, so getting information is relatively easy. once I figured out how trash those online website builders were (elementor, WP, wix) I settled that I would use Hugo since it seemed the most suited to my needs (I only need a static website) and the most familiar. My only other experience with building a website was a project I started on my desktop 7 months back.I was literally hand coding an entire html website. No PHP, no logic, just HTML and CSS with VS code live server. it was… Whew! glad I’m not doing that anymore!

Third: Getting familiar with a terminal… FINALLY! God, how many times did I have ask the command to delete a file at work? how to open pycharm-professionals? how to even move files around?? Too many to count. Now I can do it all, so much so that I have a terminal on my phone now incase I need to edit something or make a new post through the command line. It’s freaking awesome to finally figure something out that I was struggling with for so long.

Fourth: Git was a freaking tough time, man. I tried FOREFVER to get it to working. it took me two and ahalf days to get it sorted, which is what really halted most of production. I hated having to upload new additions through my slow ass internet. Git made everything way more managable. And now I will forever be able to use that tool, a very good one for all programmers!

Fifth: I learned I like having a website! It’s nice to have somewhere on the internet you can call all your own… This must be why people are so addicted to social media. It’s like a peice of myself is now out there, ready to be heard.

So after writing all this, I came to the realization that my old self would be very proud of me. I had this senerio play out in my head where somehow my self from 6 months ago would walk into my room right now and I would show her all the cool things I could do now (including how fast I can type, lol) like use basic bash commands, buy a domain name, buy server space, use the website building tool Hugo, program in Python, connect through a terminal to an webhost, use a config.toml file to make edits to my websites, add new taxonomies, (this theme didn’t originally come with the built in function to add authors, that was something I included on my own) use basic Vim commands in my IDE (dd, y, p, dw, i for insert, o. I am still getting used to hjkl for navagation), Install a new operating system to my PC (LINUX ALL THE WAY), learn algerbra, apply to college… learn Chess!! (I just surpassed 1600 score for puzzles on Chess.com btw. suck it! Way better then losing only 3 minutes and 10 moves into the game, lol. Shameful.)

She would be really proud of me… Even after all the shit I went through to get here, even after all the mistakes I’ve made.

It’s really, really good to know that your old self would be proud of where you are now. I imagine she would give me a huge hug right now if she were here. The kind of hug where you literally can’t contain yourself anymore, where you knock them off balance so that they have to stumble to regain their status of upright-ness. She would look up to me in aw, wonder where I gained such knowledge, how I got to where I am now. Why I am so accomplished. How I stopped being a scarecrow…

It’s important to look up to someone with skills that you want, to have someone in your life that will help you through the rough spots… Right now that’s only me.

I have to do this on my own now…

God, I’m crying.

Writting that code last night made me so freaking happy. Literally, I was so gitty about the entire thing, squealing each time I got something to print out like I wanted it to. My mom walked in and saw a huge smile on my face, I wish she had taken a picture of me. Would have been a nice memory to capture.

So yeah. I built a website!! Only took me 8 months, lol.

I am still crying… Shit.

We are a badass bitch who walks away from motorcycle crashes! We shouldn’t be crying this much, lol.

Well… Pretty much all I’ve done is hang around here all day and make little tweeks. Like I said, this thing is a huge time eater. Expressing yourself through text is hard.

End note:

I also learned about shortcodes. Hugo has automatic syntax hightlighing for most languages. Pretty cool.

… See you around, Space Cowboy.

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