FreshCola!

The vision: I studied design and wanted a strong, distinctive look. I really dislike generic portfolio website templates and wanted something that would showcase my skills. I was bought up on 80s computer games so I opted for a CGA four palette of cyan, magenta, black and white.

Technology stack: I bought my URL from gandi.net They're the registrar and it's better and cheaper to buy direct from them. Mine cost £22 for the first year - that's reasonable enough. I use a github.com repository to hold my code and resources. That interfaces to render.com which I'm using as a global CDN. They ensure the website is held across the world, ready for users to access.

Static websites: FreshCola! is a static website. It's quick and easy to set up, but the interactivity is limited. Getting something working was more important to me than something complex and unfinished. One day maybe I'll run the server, but for now it's staying static!

Additional services As a database developer I was really hoping to get a database installed on the same box. This isn't really an option with the free hosting I've sorted out. I'm hoping I can hook up a docker container to read/write to a database.

HTML: My knowledge of HTML was limited to begin with. I had worked with plenty of websites previous but not from scratch. I remember the feeling of fustration getting layouts to work properly. Fortunately having a monospaced font and no graphics really helped. I have kept the structure of the website more or less the same as launch. Occasionally I review the pages and address any bad-practice (that went unnoticed at the time).

CSS: Cascading Style Sheets are a funny one. They are styles that are applied to the content of the website. When learning CSS if all you need are the basics and you've got the basics, you're good to go! However CSS is quite a rabbit hole and there are whole areas (like responsive web) I have only the slightest knowledge of!

JavaScript: Although this is a static website I use JS for some interactive elements. I really wish I'd begun reading Eloquent JavaScript a lot sooner. It's an online resource about building robust and well written programmes. A lot of my earlier efforts (while they may work) are far from well coded. One day I'll go back and revisit them!

Reusability: When starting out, I copied and pasted the code for the menu onto each page. I knew it was inefficient but didn't know any better. Once I had about 20 pages it took hours to simply add another page owing to all the copies of the menu to be changed! I learned about reusable web components and everything changed. I now have ONE menu that gets referenced by all the pages. I now use web components whenever an item is needed in several places.