Hello Blog

Welcoming a platform where I can share my thoughts easily.

VS Code showing the HTML for this website on the left with a preview of the blog front page on the right Written by Okom on Nov 23, 2024 in Web. Last edited: Nov 23, 2024.

Why a blog?

I wanted to make a personal blog so I could share the things I do and come across in a more free-form way than other social media platforms. It also allows for a centralized place to host small files and write-ups related to projects that I participate in and want to easily share with others behind one link.

Inspiration

When researching blog designs, I initially was going after what the GitHub Blog looked like, but after looking around more, the design of Connor Tumbleson's blog really resonated with me in how simple it was while still having images for each article. I wanted my blog to be simple while allowing images to be displayed for each article and having the images blurred allows the eye to notice that there is an image, but for the focus to be on the title of the article.

The GitHub styling can still be seen in my website and blog in the form of the backgound color, font and the alert message styling. Such as this alert!

Other blogs I looked at in my research were the Obsidian blog, Luke Smith's blog, and Wolfgang's blog.

Portfolio and the blog

While making the blog for the reasons stated above, I realized it would also be a good place to migrate my "full development" write-ups about my portfolio projects to, instead of having them at the end of each showcase. The portfolio–which can be found at the root of this website–would only show the summaries of each project and at the bottom, a link to a blog post about the details of the project would be provided. That's my plan.

Screenshot of the Smallhalla article showing the 'full development' section
The "full development" section in the Smallhalla page at the time of writing.

Backend

The blog is made from scratch with pure HTML and CSS. I don't like using JavaScript if a solution can be found without it. Being a user of the NoScript and uBlock Origin (on hard mode) addons for my browser, I respect websites that I'm able to browse the essential content of without having to unblock requests to external domains or allowing JavaScript to run.

At the time of writing, the only JavaScript I've had to use on my website is a script that opens a category Details-box when a link takes you to a specific issue on a map feedback report such as Affinity v1849 - Gamemode, KOTH Capture Zone Bad Vertical Position. And even that is just a quality-of-life addition that isn't essential for the page to work.

<body onload="openDetails()">
    
<script>
    function openDetails() {
        if (window.location.href.indexOf('#Layout') > -1) {
            document.getElementById("Layout").open = true;
        } else if (window.location.href.indexOf('#Spawning') > -1) {
            document.getElementById("Spawning").open = true;
        } else if (window.location.href.indexOf('#Sandbox') > -1) {
            document.getElementById("Sandbox").open = true;
        } else if (window.location.href.indexOf('#Gamemodes') > -1) {
            document.getElementById("Gamemodes").open = true;
        } else if (window.location.href.indexOf('#Navmesh') > -1) {
            document.getElementById("Navmesh").open = true;
        } else if (window.location.href.indexOf('#Lighting') > -1) {
            document.getElementById("Lighting").open = true;
        } else if (window.location.href.indexOf('#Misc') > -1) {
            document.getElementById("Misc").open = true;
        } else {
            //do nothing
        }
    }
</script>
JavaScript function for opening a Details-box if a specific string is found in the URL upon page load. Please do judge it.

Static site

My whole website is still static and is built manually, meaning that if I want to make a change, I need to open the source files, edit and upload them to a server. When researching how to make a blog, I looked into the Eleventy static site generator and followed a tutorial by Kevin Powell using it. I also researched content management systems, but in the end I just stuck to the manual process for now as I want to first make the blog work, and then focus on the semantics if need be.

What to expect

In my blog you can expect to see detailed breakdowns of the projects I've made or collaborated on, technical dives into topics that interest me as well as some personal things that I feel comfortable sharing and see as a benefit for others to learn about.