How do you approach making your sites?

[Oceansandy02]

I already knew a bit of basic HTML, but I started by looking at tutorials and copying the code there to see which worked for me. I also copy some of the code I like for other stuff to save time typing. I eventually stylized the stolen code from the tutorials to eventually make it my own.

I also encourage people to copy my website (with credit, of course!) Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I should experiment a bit more, and learn how to make templates.

[Bailey / Jay]

When first learning, I started off with a step-by-step youtube tutorial (no idea which one) and just messed around with things to see what changed when. Then, I did a Bad Thing™ and copy/pasted the source code of my carrd to play around with it and figure out how it worked. From there, it was sort of just repeatedly testing things to figure out how they worked, and occasionally googled things I wanted to do or didn't understand.

As of now, I have a pretty good understanding of HTML and CSS, and use that as my basis! I do reuse some snippets I've saved, but that's mostly for metadata or just for the ease of it. As of recently, I tend to use 11ty to speed up the process, as I tend to use consistent layouts across my sites, but I still prefer coding it myself to using pre-made layouts. I love seeing sites that use pre-made layouts because I know that means the person wanted to make a site and found the tools to help them do so, but I personally prefer making my own :3