Creating my first blog post
Today I made my first personal website, all in one day. Here are my notes on putting it together.
Getting started
I used Awesome Builder (formerly 11ty) to build this website. I watched the "6 Minutes to Build a Blog from Scratch with Eleventy" video first, and while it was informative I decided instead of following along I'd jump to the Eleventy-base-blog guide.
From there I started messing around with files until I got a good starting point for my website. The file structure was intuitive enough I didn't have to dig for too long to find what I was looking for.
Verifying my Mastodon account while developing with 11ty
I wanted to make sure I could verify my Mastodon account using my website. That requires modifying the <href> link to my Mastodon account with a rel="me" attribute. I'd already added a profile link to my Links page, but that wasn't going to cut the mustard. The page was written in Markdown, and Markdown doesn't yet support link attributes, and I assumed I'd have to modify the HTML document in the _site folder every time I updated that page if I wanted to stay verified. I had to find an alternative.
After looking into 11ty filters and plugins and still not being sure if or how they would resolve my issue, I decided on a simple workaround: add a link to my Mastodon to the footer of every page. It's my prefered social media platform anyway.
Hosting the site
After getting into a workable state, I needed a host for my website. I decided to go with Codeberg's pages feature. I've used GitHub in the past for hosting repositories, but Microsoft and its history of anti-human behavior makes my stomach churn.
It's been a long time since I used any kind of git repository, so it took time to get back into the workflow. Now that I have it figured out, though, I'm proud of the final product.
What's next
As is obvious if I haven't fixed it by the time you're reading this, I'm using the basic layout and color scheme. My plan is to find a color scheme I like, and then work on further customizing the font and other visual elements.