My First Website
I Decided to Use Gatsby to Build My Friend a Website
I’m a real boy!
Why did I choose Gatsby? Because I could host a static site for free on Netlify. So...why did I choose Gatsby? I chose Gatsby because it is a static site generator that uses React, and I wanted to learn React. Why did I want to learn React? Because why not, and learn I did! Building the site was a fun experience, and very challenging. I was caught up to speed on React very quickly. It was an accomplishing feeling to do my own research and figure out how to get this thing to work on my own - like a real developer!
Not following along
Up until this point, I had mostly been doing code alongs. You know, where you watch someone on Udemy or YouTube write some code and you write what they write. I did learn quite a bit with the code alongs, but honestly I forget it pretty quickly. I’m sure after this experience it would be beneficial for me to review some of those code alongs, I might better understand what is happening!
Google was my best friend at this time. I would think about what I wanted and then try to implement it on my own. If I couldn’t figure it out or I got stuck, I would head to the Google search bar. Honestly this happened quite a bit – the desperate Google search for help. It was almost depressing how little I knew on my own.
Git and GitHub
To be honest I broke the code several times, but thanks to Git I was able to start over at a point before I had messed everything up. And that’s where this little project really helped me. I have not used a version control very much prior to this exercise. But now I have a great appreciation for it, and a much better understanding of Git. I can’t stress enough how much this experience helped me as a beginner. Choose a framework and build yourself a website!
Ok I’ll show it to you…
This site isn't pretty, and neither is the code. I am not a designer by any means. But it was my first website EVER and I am very proud of it. Check it out! www.odemmissions.com