My first site was a bit of a hassle to create. Even now, when it is still simplistic and rather unfinished, the site is difficult to manage. Some of us in class may have experience with building their own websites, and I respect them immensely; my experience, while fun during experimentation, was rough when trying to implement changes that I imagined. I mistakenly downloaded an editor called ‘Kubio” when trying to add a theme. Rather than making my experience easier, learning a whole new way to edit my site was less than helpful; while I can easily go back to the old way of editing, having to click two extra times whenever I wanted to edit a page was a bit annoying.
As a whole, playing around with the themes and adding my own photos was a fun process. Making my ‘About Me‘ page was especially fun, but I had some difficulty working in additional CSS code. I eventually went through the advanced settings in the block (which seemed to work but it was still quite the fuss to get there). When thinking about the future of my site, it might be useful to try uploading some of my digital creations there — that is, if I have the allotted space to do so. I can imagine some benefits of the site including more creative control and a greater understanding of whatever user data the website can collect. Some drawbacks to creating a website in this fashion would be the learning curve. The need to learn how to operate WordPress and integrate my own css code along the way is still a bit daunting. Overall, however, I think the utility of the site will be worth the time taken to learn how every available tool functions.
Nice job with the site. Asides from an image that didn’t load properly at the top and an odd amount of blank space at the bottom, the home page is very sleek and well designed. I had a similar long-winded experience with trying to find were all of the options were, it felt like some features were hidden. Using the site for a portfolio later on is a good idea; as for your storage problem, one workaround for that would be to upload your projects in a place that allows for more storage (like GitHub or Google Drive), then attach them through your site via a link.
I really like the theme for your website and your “About” page was fun to read! I completely agree with the experience aspect because I’ve never created a website as well. So, it definitely was new to me and it did come with its difficulties. I also think that the creative freedom is one of the best components in having my own site. When you accidentally downloaded “Kubio”, was it something that just popped up and you unintentionally clicked it? What were you mainly trying to use the CSS code for?
Despite the difficulties, congratulations on still getting the site up and running! I did not have as difficult of a time setting up my website, but I think that was heavily influenced by the fact that I did not attempt to use any third party editors. I also had the idea to use the site as a portfolio for my work from this class, so in that sense we definitely thought alike.