Software >Websites

After designing the Keezer Kiosk project, it seemed fitting to design a website to house a better copy of the instructions, as they are long. There are some comments in there that may be a little above your skill level, but I'll try to put something together on this site to help with that. I spent a little while tinkering with website design and multiple programming languages; HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, SQL, VB Script, Python, Adobe Flash and a few others. When it was time to put this site together, I was overwhelmed by how much the industry changed. Server-side technology became widely accepted and cheap. With that, the programming lingo changed too.

I spent a couple weeks getting back into what I wanted this site to look like and found Netlify (the hosting company for this site). I just finished a project and put it on Github, so I was a little interested in what this hosting company's plans looked like using the same Github technology of a Content Management System (CMS). Once you have it down, its really not that hard, but the learning curve is pretty steep.

Netlify
While I have had hosts in the past and even been one, I am amazed with the level of server-side technology they give to their users. If you don't want a free-website with ads on it, learn something new with Netlify and Github. I have to admit with all my experience in website design and administering a server, this is the easiest possible way to use simple server functions like a contact page and integration with other online applications.

Gatsby
Just to make it look prettier and sometimes a little more complicated, use the templates and style sheets provided by the growing Gatsby community. After getting into this more, I stopped using a simple text editor and started using Visual Studio Code. I initially designed the whole site with RocketCake on Windows, while I was shopping around for a host and relearning some skills. One of the best advice I can give on this subject is "if one decides to use Gatsby, thou must stay with Gatsby." Due to the large learning curve, don't get distracted by all the other plug-ins and add-ons for this technology.