Day 004: The Homepage Was Loneley
It was time to add some cards to the homepage so there was more than just the title.
When you start a website, you have to start somewhere.
A Blank Canvas of 1s and 0s
You think a white piece of paper is intimidating? Having to code up a site is way scarier. You have to plan 100 steps ahead, while also having red error messages screaming in your face.
Keep Calm and Take Shortcuts
My method for fighting this is simple: pick your battles. In my case, I didn't know what the homepage should have. I didn't know what the header and footer should have. I didn't know my fonts, my colors, my buttons. I'm still not really sure I know what the puprose of this site is. So, I put the title of the site centered on the screen. It was black and white with a generic font.
The Progress
Today I added some cards for different sections. Usually when I build a site with no design plan, I create three portait oriented rectangles next to each others. That didn't seem like the best tactic in this day in age. So, I asked Stitch to design a layout, and I screenshotted the grid it came up with. Then, I asked Perplexity to help me translate that into the code. I learned some new things, because it's not how I would've done it. If I wanted to do this in the old days, I would've Googled a bunch of examples until I found something similar, then I would've put it in and edited it until I through my laptop out the window. Then I would go buy a new laptop, polish as much as I could, and deploy. I'd keep a note to come back and fix it, but that was never guaranteed.
I Love This New World
I learned what I needed in my exact case. I got line-by-line feedback to I understand what's happening and can adjust in the future. And I was able to do it all tonight.