My Website is Published!
jdburch.com
I am very happy and proud to be releasing this website. This website is an HTML Github Pages site with a (very heavily modified by me) Jekyll theme. Prior to this experience, I had no clue at all how to program, but I jumped into HTML with both feet first and I am very proud of it! Thanks so much to my friends Warren, Matt C, and most especially Tony for helping me figure this project out, suggest tips, and even help me write snippets of code. I really appreciate it and this website would not have been a reality without it!
Buying the Domain
I bought jdburch.com in August. I used it for my St. Jude’s Campaign, but once the fundraiser was over, I decided I wanted to do more with it.
First Steps
The first steps for anything related to a website is configuring the DNS. In simple terms, the DNS is the link between the domain and the website. You point your DNS towards your website source, which for me is Github Pages. On October 8, I implemented my DNS to point at my Github Repo. It took me all day to configure.
Github Pages
Originally, I was just planning on making a very simple website. I wanted nothing more than a few sentances with some links. However, that quickly changed. Most supported Github Pages themes keep the github name at the top of the page, which frustrated me. I decided to find an “unsupported” theme that would fit my use better. I eventually settled on the Indigo theme by Kopplin. This theme had a slick design, and some features I may want to use in the future (ike a resume page).
Formatting my Site
After I set up the basics, I had to format everything I wanted on my site. There was an about page, a projects page, a blog page, as well as the home page. The very first hard task was figuring out where all the directories inside the repo were. Mind you, I was also learning html at the same time from straight trial and error. I spend many class periods coding, pushing to the site, figuring what I was doing wrong, rinse and repeat. I spend many Cougar Hours, free periods, or times where my work was done just coding. There were many times I felt discouraged, but then I would solve the problem, and I would feel proud and motivated. I kept working. I learned how to do margins, images, floats, anchors, headers, links, and much more. For just short of 2 weeks I learned and programmed, and I am finally (tentatively) complete.
What I learned
This has been quite the journey! I have learned that I do have an interest in development (which I previously denied), and I also figured out I am pretty darn good at picking it up. Most of the website was self taught, with help from my friends, but I never took any formal course. I learned that many aspects are just logical. Anchor tags took me a while to figure out, but I eventually figured out that rather than doing <a id="band"><h2>Day Band</h2></a>, I could just add the id inside of the header tag, like <h2 id="band">Day Band</h2> to jump to that part of the page. Googleing did not teach me that, I just used my logic and trial and error to figure it out. And that is what I like so much about programming. It is a different language, yet it is logical.