The Backstory
To describe how I made this site I first want to talk about what inspired me to make it. To begin with I started out just wanting to learn some basic Javascript.
However I quickly realized how limiting Javascript by itself was. As well as my friend was starting to get confident with Next JS, my friend had taken it upon himself to re-factor my basic Javascript site into Next-JS using Tailwind CSS. This gave me a great learning opportunity to get familiar with Next-JS and how to use it in a real web application. This gave me the perfect chance to do whatever I wanted and have fun making a website.
The Journey
Building the website that you are on today was not an easy task. I have spent countless hours perfecting the tiniest detail that 99.99% of people visiting the site will never even see. I have poured more hours of my time into perfecting a CSS box than I care to admit, but that pushed me and inspired me to keep building more. The rewarding feeling of getting everything finally perfect and being able to sit back for a second and enjoy what I made kept me inspired to keep going. Next-JS inspires me to build this website quickly and efficiently and gives me a framework to base what I want to do off of. In addition to using Tailwind CSS I was made very at home very quickly having never learned Javascript and had only done basic HTML and CSS in the past. Tailwind and Next-JS gave me a platform to create something truly unique and original while giving me pre-defined rules of what normal websites do.
In the world of web-development there can be so many terms thrown around that don’t feel like they really explain what they are describing. It was confusing hearing words like “Frameworks” and “components” being thrown around when it felt like nobody took the time to explain these basic fundamental concepts. Throughout this project I have been able to get first hand experience with what these terms mean and why they are important. Things like implementing components from Aceternity’s component libraries has given me a new light on how to deploy professional looking sites.
The Full-Stack
Having a pretty looking website is cool, but what can you actually do on the site? That’s a question I found myself asking after designing the front-end. I mean a website is cool but the back end it what allows you to do things a modern website is expected to have. Things you’ll see on almost any reputable website is a username and password system. A way of liking posts or being able to interact and leave your mark on the site. As well as a way of managing your account. These were all major tasks I took on to start to come together with my plan of what I wanted the site to me. Originally I played with the idea of making it a more Social Media focused site that allowed anyone with an account to post here but after some more thought I realized how likely that was to get abused and spammed. So instead I opted to give myself a tiny corner of the internet. A place where I can scream as loud as I can about anything I want. So I got to work implementing a way for individuals to create an account, and like their favorite posts. This allows someone to actually want to come back to the site and introduces a personal aspect to the site. No 2 people will likely favorite the same posts and creates a way of personalizing the site. Simple things like that took a ton of time to get right. I remember spending hours ensuring that users could like posts and unlike posts, and for some reason liking posts was easy, but un-liking them took 8 hours to get working. It’s tiny things like that that will occupy so much of your time building a site.
I chose Pocketbase for the back-end because I thought it was going to be the easiest option for a mostly front-end developer. Looking back I am so glad I made that decision because out of all the things to get right the back-end Pocketbase dashboard made it easy to get started with learning what is possible with a back-end. Back-end’s empower developers to create and store lists basically. But as an end user you don’t realize how much of what makes up web-applications at the end of the day comes down to a list of things. I mean isn’t everything in technology basically just a list. That sounds like a radical statement at first but look at the definition of list
List - a number of connected items or names written or printed consecutively, typically one below the other.
When you look at it from that perspective you start to realize how a back-end is really just a way of storing information. As you break down these complex concepts like Database and Back-end down to their simplest form it’s easy to start working with resources like Pocketbase to fill in the gaps between SQL master and Front-end developer. I won’t say I am the smartest Back-end developer but Pocketbase empowered me to do things I never would have been able to otherwise.
the site you see today
After painstaking hours behind a keyboard, and my brain being absolutely turned inside out. You finally find the website you are on right now. It’s has been a long journey to get here and at this point I’m never going to stop working on it. However looking back at this point makes me realize how far I’ve come.
