Re-Re-Building Lgrqvst.com, Again—Again

So, uh. I went and redid the site again.

The previous design, that I launched in March of this year was built with Gatsby, and so is this version, but where the previous version was to some extent one long learning experience, this time around, I actually felt a lot more like I knew what I was doing. The previous site, as is often the case with my personal web sites, came about as an experiment. I have an idea that I try building, and during the process, I have two more ideas, and I try to implement those. When I stumble on a fourth idea, I have to go back and re-do the first three, often in quite time-consuming ways.

Not ideal.

With this site, I actually had a pretty solid idea about what I wanted when I set out, and with the experience of the last site under my belt, on the whole, it went a lot more smoothly. Yes, a few things changed, and a few things were added, because that’s in the nature of building things only for yourself. With no client to please and no pressure to deliver at a specific time, I tend to get more lost in my whims, but even so. Remarkably on-track the entire time.

The previous site was… ok. I think. It was ok, but it had quite a few bugs, and quite a few unattractive and largely unintended side effects from design decisions made early on, that proved to be quite bothersome to change. I think I liked the first idea I had for it, but then it all just got away from me at some point. In the end I just couldn’t get up any passion to make the changes to it that might have made the whole thing work. The more I didn’t work on the site, the more I noticed little things that just really bothered me, and so I made this new one specifically as a counter to the small things that had been grating on me. With this one, I hope I’ll feel more inclined to actually publish some interesting content on here.

There were a few things I kept from the last site. I still use CSS grid for the content, but I’ve set it up to work more smoothly this time. I still have themes, but instead of the very convoluted solution I used last time, this time I’m just doing a simple light/dark thing that uses CSS variables. Over all, I’ve toned down my use of Styled Components a bit. Since it’s all scoped anyway, I’ve brought down the number of components a lot and just used a lot more type selectors. Amazing the difference a little planning and some experience can do.

It’s always been a kind of mental block to me, not having a site I’m pleased with. I might be working on something and get an urge to share it with the world, but if I’m not feeling happy with my website, I’ll lose some of that enthusiasm, and shove whatever it might have been to the side, to work on something else instead. It’s, uh. Not a good thing. But I’m feeling pretty good about the site now.

Tech-wise, it’s pretty much the same as the last one. Gatsby, Mdx, Styled Components, Netlify. As it is right now, there are still a few things left to be done, but I think it’s fine to launch it in its current state.

So there we have it. Second site in three months. Hopefully this one will stick around for a bit longer.