What's a tough part you're currently planning and working on for your website? - ✁ ∙ Web Crafting - MelonLand Forum
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What's a tough part you're currently planning and working on for your website?
Posted by shevek on 21 Jul, 2023 14:05 -
For specific issues and advice, we have the Help & Tutorials section, and for our completed projects, we make a thread or post in Personal Announcements.
However, hows the other parts going for you, basically before it is public? What issues are you currently tackling on your own in the background, what's on your mind that you're still working out on how to implement on your website? Anything you plan to add, are in the process of adding or improving and optimizing? Anything that's melting your brain? Let's share with eachother some of the background headaches of webmastery and commiserate
I would love to hear about it.
Personally, there is always a lot of background work going on thinking about where to organize what on my websites, and how.
I'm currently experiencing the lock-in effect of having committed to a certain design or structure of information, and reaping the consequences.
You might also know this weird domino effect of wanting to add something to your website, but it doesn't really fit on existing pages design-wise, but it isn't really a standalone thing; so you think about how to move things around. And then you realize, if I add this together, then that one page becomes useless, or when I add these together, it becomes too crowded. And then you might not only have to add 1 thing, but add it together with 3 existing things, but that would mean redoing the entire page of the website, or maybe the entire website navigation! Suddenly adding 1 thing can explode into a load of work!
Even more complicated when you like the design of the page you should rework, and don't wanna give it up!
Needless to say, there will be some consolidation of pages and changes on my little shelf. Having such a visual representation of site content also adds the hard mode of "if I remove something, what the hell else do I put there, and how do I visualize it?". And the opposite is true too; the shelf and table have limited space. But it's a fun challenge! I am beginning to work on that today. -
Goodness, everything you said triggered all the thoughts I have with my website! But this is a good thing, right? Knowing that this is a forever-WIP - something you will always keep thinking about whilst improving. Like your home!
I personally have a huge overhaul in mind. I keep thinking about ways to give more people more value when using my site. While it is a process of self-expression, the space I take up virtually shall now encourage others to create. But those are just thoughts that I romanitcally discuss when I am on train rides, haha! My first hurdle is accessibility, for which I believe it is more than device-friendliness, ARIA, and colours.
On a less vague note, I would love to refactor the site in PHP. This language has been my starting point in loving the web, so it bears sentimental value to me! It's time to really master it, and let my website speak about those experiences.
I am currently curating a list of cyberfeminist resources relating specifically to my interests. I really want my Links page to be something special. People have led me to the most amazing places with their lists, so I want to contribute! -
I'm thinking of creating a kind of online series bible for my fiction, and I need to decide whether it should be in a directory on my main site or whether it should get a subdomain. Likewise for my project to document the scripts I wrote to build my website.
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For me since I'm just starting out it's hard to implement what would be my ideal site, so the tough part is initial formatting of things. It's hard to take a blank page and lay it out in an interesting way when I'm still learning the basics let alone the more complicated elements like scripting and animation.
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The issue with mobile compatibility.
I'd like my site to be viewable on mobile, but I have no idea how to do that or where to start! I've tried looking at documentation, but I can't wrap my head around it... Which is why it's the toughest thing for me right now
At the very least, I'm trying... Slowly but surely LOL. -
I personally have a huge overhaul in mind. I keep thinking about ways to give more people more value when using my site. While it is a process of self-expression, the space I take up virtually shall now encourage others to create
That's such a sweet motivation and goal to have. I hope you succeed and find something you can incorporate into your website that fulfills this
I would love to refactor the site in PHP
Ohh! PHP is honestly something I don't know much about. Will you be using Laravel?I'm thinking of creating a kind of online series bible for my fiction, and I need to decide whether it should be in a directory on my main site or whether it should get a subdomain. Likewise for my project to document the scripts I wrote to build my website.
Wow, that sounds like a lot of work you put in. I love that you are putting so much effort into your fiction, and that you're thinking of having this little wiki for your scripts. I would love to see it.For me since I'm just starting out it's hard to implement what would be my ideal site, so the tough part is initial formatting of things. It's hard to take a blank page and lay it out in an interesting way when I'm still learning the basics let alone the more complicated elements like scripting and animation.
Understandable
for me, it always helped to browse a lot of sites and note what I like about them, then try to incorporate the stuff I like into one webpage, if possible. Not necessarily code, but simply how information is divided and presented on the page, a color scheme, the use of graphics or lines, etc.; it's easier to create something when you have a little checklist of standards as guidance. And once you have the first draft it's easier to iterate 
I'd like my site to be viewable on mobile, but I have no idea how to do that or where to start! I've tried looking at documentation, but I can't wrap my head around it... Which is why it's the toughest thing for me right now
Ah, same here! I think we talked about it briefly in your chatbox I still think in the case of my website, I'll probably code a mobile version from scratch instead of trying to make all the existing pages meant for desktop squish into a mobile format. So hopefully, there will one day be a check if you're on a mobile device, and then it will automatically lead you to daintye.co/mobile or whatever, which is a specifically coded home page for mobile, from which you will access other sites coded from scratch for mobile. It will definitely not have as many pages as the desktop version and be a little more summarized (gotta go on desktop for the full experience, I guess) but it's something! Hope I can get to that later this year. -
Ah, same here! I think we talked about it briefly in your chatbox I still think in the case of my website, I'll probably code a mobile version from scratch instead of trying to make all the existing pages meant for desktop squish into a mobile format. So hopefully, there will one day be a check if you're on a mobile device, and then it will automatically lead you to daintye.co/mobile or whatever, which is a specifically coded home page for mobile, from which you will access other sites coded from scratch for mobile. It will definitely not have as many pages as the desktop version and be a little more summarized (gotta go on desktop for the full experience, I guess) but it's something! Hope I can get to that later this year.
Yes I remember that conversation! I'd like to actually thank you for this thread, because it gave me the push to once more try again at figuring out mobile compatibility— and I'm pretty sure I got it working on my index!
Making whole new pages does sound like a good workaround though, and it'd deffo allow for better customization I think! There are some sections of my new mobile index that I'd ideally like to change, but I think it works well for now
Having the "mobile section" be more limited makes sense too, even if only to save your sanity! -
Wow, that sounds like a lot of work you put in. I love that you are putting so much effort into your fiction, and that you're thinking of having this little wiki for your scripts. I would love to see it.
I wasn't really thinking of a wiki for my shell scripts. I figured I'd embed them all into one page, kinda like those old-fashioned computer programming enthusiast magazines that would include code listings. Of course, if it's one page it could just be a monster blog post. :)
But then I might find myself on the lower right-hand side of the curve in this graph.
I kinda have a custom static generator, but I've tried not to post about it. Here's the makefile central to the whole thing if you're interested. https://git.sr.ht/~starbreaker/starbreaker.org/tree/main/item/makefile -
I finally prototyped my first "blog" entry for my site, but it IS entirely manual... at some point I need to learn how to use a static site generator or something and stop doing everything manually. I'm being lazy but in a strange way, I don't like learning how to do the things I'm doing even if in the end its faster.
That being said, I might need to go and learn javascript so I can finally use my site for its intended purpose: a gallery site. It honestly wouldn't be too hard to do what I need it to do, but... I spent all my executive functioning this week making the blog thing and I'm tiiiiired.
I also want to make a forum too, but getting that set up would require a lot of financial commitment I don't know if i'm ready for. -
I have been... cutting out lots of little sections of a map I drew to use as an image map for my site. You can click on a city name, country name, etc., and get a little popup telling you about the region, what it looks like, etc etc. It's not "tough" so much as tedious, I guess. Need to punch out every name into its own area and then actually write content for each area, and my notes can be a little scattered. And some regions are only vague ideas, so they need workshopping/finetuning. But I do enjoy writing it, so I'm trying to whittle away at it a little every day!
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The issue with mobile compatibility.
I'd like my site to be viewable on mobile, but I have no idea how to do that or where to start! I've tried looking at documentation, but I can't wrap my head around it... Which is why it's the toughest thing for me right now
At the very least, I'm trying... Slowly but surely LOL.
Ohhh I relate to this so much! I’ve been trying to fight with mine on mobile compatibility for the past couple days now. I didn’t have it envisioned as something my site would have, but I’ve been working on it as some people have requested it (on top of some general scaling issues on any device that’s not native to my computer screen - this has been resolved-ish). I have some semblance of support set up but it’s not quite where I want it yet…
Main thing that sucked was turning my cute little stickied side navbar into a collapsible nav :( ended up getting rid of the stickied nav and making a flexbox that automatically flipped the nav from the right to up top when you’re on mobile.
On a macro level, trying to execute your vision of what you want to do with a site that would take a lot of time/effort/Googling to do (especially with JavaScript involved…). In the earlier planning phases of my site, I thought it’d be a fun idea to try and code a little blinkie drawer that a user could click on to open - a digital junk drawer! But I ended up giving it up as I had some difficulties figuring out how to get it working (not to mention the aforementioned mobile compatibility!) -
I'm currently working on pages for all of my OCs. I have 3 completed as of right now and about 17 more to go (and that's only if I don't make any more OCs in the time it takes me to make all these pages). It requires a fullbody drawing of the OC, information on them, their backstory (if they have one) their relationships with other characters (where applicable) and also fun facts because I have little buttons on each OCs page that gives you a random fun fact about them. It's slow going but it'll be so satisfying to see all of the pages looking nice when they're done.
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Gesturing wildly at my art site. Pretty much every single page needs work, or doesn't exist at all yet. My main gallery in particular is only half-working right now... I'm tinkering with the 100%-working-images version of it behind the scenes, and after that's published I'll be making actual thumbnails and working out how to display longer image descriptions in the way I have in mind...
I'm currently working on pages for all of my OCs. I have 3 completed as of right now and about 17 more to go (and that's only if I don't make any more OCs in the time it takes me to make all these pages).
Not to mention I'm also in this boat. I've got, like, 30 OCs to make profiles for. I'm probably going to end up cropping their reference pics for their individual pages...
for me, it always helped to browse a lot of sites and note what I like about them, then try to incorporate the stuff I like into one webpage, if possible. Not necessarily code, but simply how information is divided and presented on the page, a color scheme, the use of graphics or lines, etc.; it's easier to create something when you have a little checklist of standards as guidance. And once you have the first draft it's easier to iterate 
Having the "mobile section" be more limited makes sense too, even if only to save your sanity!
