Building My Site
Details of how I created my website and the many problems I encountered. I ran into many challenges while building it and wanted to detail it for myself and also to outline the solutions I found in case it helps someone else.
This page is still a work in progress. Check back later!
Using Hydejack
Hydejack is “a boutique Jekyll theme for hackers, nerds, and academics” and the skeleton of what my site was built on. It is based off Hyde, and I was drawn to it over its predecessor due to how dynamic it is as it utilizes utilization Javascript for transitions. However, I ultimately found it to be more trouble than it was worth.
Don’t get me wrong, I was able to make a great website that functioned exactly how I wanted it to. But still, I wasted a lot of time trying to get it work properly and spent many nights frustrated while trying to find solutions. Hydejack looks great, but it hides a lot of the backbone of the site and makes it inaccessible unless you really know what you are doing with web development or pay for the premium version. Overall, it was a great exercise in learning HTML and CSS, but I would make my website without using Hydejack if I were to do it again.
Using Ruby for the First time
One of the first hurdles I had was to learn how to use Ruby to run Jekyll. I originally thought it was going to be a huge issue, but it was much easier than I thought and actually quite easy. The first step is to install Ruby and once it is installed, everything can be ran from the command line. For Windows, the only commands needed are:
cd [folder where you store your site]
Changes current directory
gem install bundle
bundle install
Creates a bundler gem and installs the required packages, i.e. jekyll. These commands are only needed for the initial setup.
bundle exec jekyll build
bundle exec jekyll serve
These commands are used to run the site each time you work on or update it. The “build” version builds the website immediately, creating the static pages needed for it to function. The “serve” version creates a server that automatically makes changes to the site as you work on. This method makes it extremely easy to see and test your changes in real time and is what I mostly use.
GitHub Pages
For hosting, I used Github Pages. Overall, it is a great solution and I recommend it wholeheartedly; it’s free, easy to access and provides a professional domain name. However, despite these benefits, how Hydejack interacted with it caused countless issues and just created another complex layer to troubleshoot.
Github Pages has an automated pipeline that builds, deploys and reports the site progress when changes are pushed.
work from here
build issues
publish issues
atom
Images
putting things in the right folder
inkscape favico masks/layers etc
Updating Themes
horrible… To be added - needed anchor for commit message
What I Would Have Done Differently
Looking back at the process, my main takeaway would be to not use Hydejack. I came away enjoying how dynamic and sleek the site looks, but the time I spent troubleshooting could have been better spent elsewhere. I initially used it as I thought it could help me stand out from the crowd with my personal website, but I now wonder if spending more time on projects or improving my skills would have resulted a larger ROI. While I am not unhappy with the outcome, the effort and frustration Hydejack caused made me wonder if Flask would have been a better framework, the packaged Hyde themes would have been simpler or plain HTML and CSS would have been quicker. Overall, I gained new skills in troubleshooting and like my website, so I am still satisfied with the outcome.
