OK, so the next step in this web dev learning journey is trying out Zonelets, which is what I've done today. I got it setup and reformatted the few blog posts I've written so far into the Zonelets template. I feel like I know enough HTML/CSS/Javascript at this point to understand everything the Zonelets templates/scripts are doing. So that's good. It seems like a sensible bit of automation to apply.
At the same time though, I feel it takes away a bit of the magic of writing a website totally from scratch and by hand. On the other hand, yesterday I spent a lot of time fiddling with CSS instead of actually blogging. I learned a lot about CSS, which is beneficial I suppose. But it felt like I was spinning my wheels and didn't make much progress. Idk.
And then there's the matter of writing in raw HTML. Do I actually want to do this? It's an interesting experiment for sure. And I'm actually learning a decent amount, and it's made me want to use Vim for a change. So, that's good. Maybe I just need to be persistent and keep going with it.
I feel that sticking with coding everything by hand also has the advantage of enforcing simplicity. If I'm hand coding, I'm not going to want to introduce more complexity than is absolutely necessary. And I like a minimalist aesthetic. Really I just want a simple space to write, and to feel like I have full control over what I publish in both style and content.
I have yet to try Bear Blog, although that's on my list. Because really, the most practical thing would be for me to use a minimalist blog platform if what i'm interesting in is blogging. and then all of the coding gets out of the way. I enjoy the technical aspect of it, but I also work in a technical line of work, so sometimes troubleshooting and learnign new aspects of technology in my spare time can feel draining and overwhelming. At the same time, knowing more about it could be helpful for my career. Around and around I go.
Well, this was a brain dump. I'll keep thinking about it. Learning through experience. At a minimum, I need to change the zonelets theme as the default isn't what I want!