From 25945b8fead989cca09a23983623b63ce36dcc0c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Christian Cleberg Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2024 20:11:17 -0600 Subject: feat: total re-write from Emacs org-mode to Zola markdown --- content/blog/2020-12-27-website-redesign.md | 102 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 102 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/blog/2020-12-27-website-redesign.md (limited to 'content/blog/2020-12-27-website-redesign.md') diff --git a/content/blog/2020-12-27-website-redesign.md b/content/blog/2020-12-27-website-redesign.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..997c961 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2020-12-27-website-redesign.md @@ -0,0 +1,102 @@ ++++ +date = 2020-12-27 +title = "Redesigning My Website: The 5 KB Result" +description = "A retrospective on my recent website redesign." ++++ + +# A Brief History + +As a form of continuous learning and entertainment, I've been running a +handful of websites since 2016 when I took my first programming courses +in college. I maintain one main website, the place I consider the +official website to represent me. Under this site, I have a handful of +subdirectories and subdomains. + +One of the parts I've enjoyed the most about web development is the +aspect of designing an identity for a web page and working to find +exciting ways to display the site's content. Inevitably, this means +I've changed the designs for my websites more times than I could +possibly count. Since I don't really host anything on my main webpage +that's vital, it allows me the freedom to change things as inspiration +strikes. + +Historically, I've relied on core utilities for spacing, components, +and layouts from [Bootstrap](https://getbootstrap.com) and added custom +CSS for fonts, accents, colors, and other items. I also tend to create +sites with no border radius on items, visible borders, and content that +takes up the entire screen (using whitespace inside components instead +of whitespace around my components). + +# The Redesign Process + +About a week ago, I found myself wishing for a new design yet again. The +prior design was largely inspired by IBM's [Carbon Design +System](https://www.carbondesignsystem.com) and relied on jQuery, +Bootstrap, along with some compressed +[.webp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP) images. + +To anyone who knows my preferences toward web design - and even in my +personal life - it should be no surprise that I immediately started +looking for inspiration on minimalism. While there are some decent +minimalistic designs on sites like +[Dribbble](https://dribbble.com/search/shots/popular/web-design?q=minimalism), +people seem to mostly discuss [brutalist web +design](https://brutalist-web.design) when you ask about minimalism. +While brutalist web design doesn't have to be minimal, it often is. + +I suppose, in a way, I did create a brutalist website since my HTML is +semantic and accessible, hyperlinks are colored and underlined, and all +native browser functions like scrolling and the back button work as +expected. However, I didn't think about brutalism while designing these +sites. + +The new design followed a simple design process. I walked through the +screens on my blog and asked myself: "Is this element necessary for a +user?" This allowed me to first start by removing all javascript, which +had the sole purpose of allowing users to open a collapsed navbar on +mobile. Replacing the collapsible navbar allowed me to remove both +jQuery and Bootstrap's javascript. + +Next, I removed things like author names (since I'm literally the only +person who will ever write on this site), multiple ways to click on a +blog post card, blog post descriptions, and the scroll-to-top button. It +also helped to move all categories to a single page, rather than have +each category on its own page. + +The final big piece to finish the +"[KonMari](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Kondo#KonMari_method)"-like +part of my process was to remove Bootstrap CSS in its entirety. However, +this meant pulling out a few very useful classes, such as `.img-fluid` +and the default font stacks to keep in my custom CSS. + +After removing all the unnecessary pieces, I was finally able to +reorganize my content and add a very small amount of custom CSS to make +everything pretty. This took a brief amount of time, effectively just +consisting of me converting `
` tags into things like +`