Hello World, website update
Tag: Personal »
Summary
Talking about the newly-updated website and some future plans.
Content
Wah!
The major update for my website has mostly been completed! As the websites that I use daily kept changing for the worse, I figured it was about time to have a more permanent location for myself. This place was pretty much only a single-page website before, but now it has one new thing that I really wanted to have: a blog!
I ported over some posts that I wrote from other places to test things out. You can even look at a list of them through the archive or via tags, both separated by year…! Wow.
For some older posts, I changed the GIFs into images to save some space. I’m still wondering if I’ll even use animated images in here, since I don’t think there’s a way to not make them auto-play by default for other people without doing complicated things. I’ll have to worry if they’re showing quick bright flashes every time, too… I don’t really mind sticking to JPGs though, as long as I can write things.
The same goes for videos and other embeds, but for those, I think I’m fine with just being able to add a link to a different website for now.
The blog also has an Atom feed and an MF2 feed. I learned a bit more about web feeds as I manually did these. I wish MF2 feeds are used more as they felt easier to do and maintain, but I couldn’t find an accessible reader for it with my searching skills…
I’m pretty bad at searching though, so maybe there’s one out there somewhere. Technically it should be possible to make one on my own, as there’s already multiple MF2 parsers out there… It sounds fun to make, but… time…
Reading about MF2 also led me into Webmentions and IndieAuth. I’m not sure if I want to add comments on here yet, so I left the former be right now. As for the latter, I still don’t quite understand how I could do it on my own. It got a bit too technical for me. Maybe next time…?
Anyways, in the future, I plan on writing more thoughts about video games that I played and random things that interest me, alongside some public game development updates. Private posts will remain on Ko-fi.
(I had to skip writing a Himig preview on Ko-fi last week to finish this website, but it should be back this week. Hello to people from over there…!)
I would also like to write some stories for fun, which was one of the main reasons that made me spend some time in finishing this website update. I’m not sure if they’ll be good for anyone aside from me though, haha.
Aside from the blog, the whole website has been redesigned as well. It now has better support for different screen sizes, keyboard navigation using the Tab key, and being able to change into dark mode based on system settings. I ended up removing the checkered background from before, as reading long-form text with it didn’t feel right.
I was planning to try out Eleventy for the redesign, but my tired brain didn’t want to install anything at the time and felt it was too daunting somehow, haha. I ended up just doing it all manually with plain old HTML and CSS, learning a few new things in the process. I’m glad to know that my unused knowledge from more than a decade ago still works for the most part, haha.
I would still recommend checking Eleventy out if you plan on posting frequently though, to make things relatively easier for yourself in the long run.
I’ll make a short documentation for myself whenever I make new posts later. There’s a few files to jump around in and edit each time, but I won’t be posting something everyday anyway, so it should be fine.
I’m also using Git with Git Extensions for version control, and to not forget which files to upload after any website changes.
Speaking of changes, I still have to add some blogs on the blogroll later. I wanted to ask for permission from people first, so it’s just a blank page for now. I should probably add a date in there to show when I last updated it.
The games section for the website is also pretty empty right now, only having the games listed from the previous design. I’m thinking of listing some of my cancelled and first few games in there sometime. For now, I just updated Himig’s press kit page and linked to my Itch page on the games section, which was also redesigned a bit to complement the light mode version of this website.
The first games that I made were only playable via the Unity Web Player, which I believe most people don’t have by now. I don’t even know if it’ll work if you still have it. I still have the source code for some of the games, but I don’t really feel like installing Unity again just to port them to a proper PC version…
The original Unity Web builds are on Ko-fi, if you’re interested in them.
I might try playing around with the recently-released Downpour to see if I can make smaller versions of the games through it, and maybe even add them into the website. That sounds kind of neat.
…and that’s all for now! Thank you for reading. It took a while to make, but I’m pretty excited to have this website exist and be able to write more in it. I can finally slowly go through the backlog of things that I wanted to write about.
For general life updates after the most recent public Himig devlog: I’m still working on the game and updating on Ko-fi, I had to deal with a lot of stress and bills, and I consistently deal with random body pains and the eternal summer heat, haha. I’m pretty happy overall at least.
Time to go back to making video games! Stay safe, and see you next time.