I've been trying to learn CSS. I went through the relevant sections of Colt Steele's Web Bootcamp. It is mostly focused on Bootstrap, which disappointed me a bit. So I went through MDN to learn Flexbox and CSS Grid, which seemed like a better alternative. The fundamentals are easy enough, but when I try to make a layout everything gets mixed in my head (even though I have the documentation open at all times). The impression I get is that modern CSS is not one thing, but a bunch of little things that resemble each other in a confusing way. It's hard to infer stuff and there are gotchas everywhere. I know this is not a programming language, but it is at least programming-related. Learning CSS feels more like learning English than a technology: you must accept that it's not a cohesive system, but rather the culmination of a long historical process full of random developments.

I tried getting back to Bootstrap, but then I have to override a bunch of stuff I don't even know is there.

I'm having a lot of trouble trying to put something very simple together. I just wanna leave that behind and go back to my beloved Python.

I did not want this to be a rant, but it is now a rant. So be it :P

This post has now a soundtrack.

I currently have a personal "portfolio" site that I haven't updated in close to a year. I'm planning now on revamping it, and I am using this opportunity to reconsider the static site generator I am using.

I host my site on Github pages, which means that Jekyll was originally very appealing due to its nice integration with Github. However, I have found it difficult to greatly customize the themes I find, and I'm the type of person that likes to get everything "just right". It seems like Hugo might be more extensible in this regard, but I'm not sure if that alone makes it worth the switch from my current setup. Anecdotally, a lot of the blogs I find whose layouts I really like tend to use Hugo.

Pure HTML/CSS is an option but that seems like a big overhead for what I want. I'm no web developer and I don't plan on becoming one.

I've been learning Laravel, and familiarizing myself with the framework by coding up a blogging website. Right now, it's minimally functional, and I'd like to add some more features to it. Since this is my first project with Laravel the code is a mess, and it's just about time for me to rewrite the whole thing. Before starting that, I'd like to have a better idea of what my final product should be. I don't want to recreate WordPress in Laravel, but I do want to have something I wouldn't spit at. Basically a project that would be good as a resume builder if I ever needed one.

So far, my website allows users to...

• register for an account, log in/out, update their email address and display name
• create posts with a WISIWYG editor
• upload files
• create profiles
• and manipulate everything through CRUD.

What do you think the minimal features a blogging platform needs to have to be "complete" and usable as a stand-alone system?