This is the first post on this blog. I guess it’s a good time to write about the reasons for creating this website and the ideas I have for its development.
Firstly, I believe it’s good to have your own place on the internet. It makes you independent from all these big platforms like Facebook and Twitter. You have total freedom to publish whatever you want (within the legal limits, of course) and nobody can remove or moderate your content. The platforms allow less and less customizability, making everything look bland and limiting creativity. They keep changing layouts and styles, to “modernize” them, even though there’s no need for it. Sometimes that makes them less usable actually. Same thing goes for their functionality. Sure, they add new features but sometimes also remove others. If you were using a feature that was removed, there’s nothing you can do about it. On your own website, you have control over every aspect of it. With a little effort you can change how it looks and works to better suit your needs and preferences.
Now, I don’t completely hate platforms. Like everything, they have pros and cons. I just wanted to mention some of the things I personally find annoying about them and how one can avoid them by creating a personal website.
So, my reason for creating this website is to have my own place on the internet, that would allow me to be independent and to have control over it. Other than that, I wanted to have an online CV and portfolio, as well as, a blog where I could post my opinions, thoughts, and technical articles. It’s also a place where I can share my interests and hobbies.
You may have noticed that this website is very minimalistic, and well… looks ugly. This is intentional. When I’m making websites, I usually focus on the design, user interface, and cool visual things. However, at the same time, I often neglect the reason for creating the website in the first place - the content. This page was originally created in December 2018 but because I couldn’t figure out the design, it didn’t change at all since then. That is why, I decided to take a different approach now.
First, I will create the content that will be displayed on this site, i.e. prepare my résumé and descriptions of the projects in my portfolio, with images and videos. Then, I will put everything here in plain HTML only. Next, I will make some designs, and style the page with CSS, so it will look nicer. As the last step, I will extend it with a small amount of JavaScript, to make it more dynamic.
Another aspect of this idea is that I want this website to be usable in every possible browser, with CSS and JavaScript enabled or not. I want them to enhance the site but not to be a required dependency, like it is on most of the websites on the Internet. This limits the way I can create the layout and style because everything has to be backwards compatible and look someway similar, but it’s not an impossible task. I consider it an interesting challenge. It’s a different approach to web development and I think it can make me rethink some of the modern practices.