I am beginning to reintroduce myself with web app development and have about fifteen years of classic ASP/ASP.NET under my belt.

I’ve decided to continue on with my decision to learn Ruby on Rails.

In retrospect, my university professors passed only one (as best as I can remember) best practice onto us fledgling programmers:

Documentation

Besides documentation, are there other general best practices to consider?

And, specifically, are there best practices when developing with Ruby on Rails?

I come from a background of classic ASP/ASP.NET programming. I had about fifteen years of professional experience with it and completely stopped all programming around 2008.

Now, I want to pick up web programming again. I looked at and tinkered with Python, .Net Core, as well as others.

I was, particularly, impressed with Ruby on Rails and have completed about thirty hours of training through The Odin Project.

Before I continue on with ROR, I just wondered if I may have missed something out there that could turn out to be a 'better' option for me.

What are your thoughts on ROR? Would you recommend some other framework? Why or why not?

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, recently, purchased a domain that will be developed in the future. Right now, I'd just want a simple landing page (years ago this was hideously displayed as 'under construction'). I don't have much funds so I'm looking for something free or dirt cheap.

Bonus question: What would you recommend for the future? In the beginning, there will be monetary constraints. Also, I imagine that there will be two primary functions. Namely, a way in which to post blog-type submissions from academics and a way in which to sell merchandise in order to raise funds for a not-for-profit endeavor.

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?

Hi everyone! Per admin recommendation I'm posting this in comp.

I would like to switch Staining The Timbre from a blogspot domain to its own. I can handle the paperwork and whatnot associated with the url change, but I would like to hire a web designer to spruce up the joint a bit. Right now I'm using a default theme provided by Blogspot and, while it serves its purpose, it makes the page look like it's run by a high schooler.

It should be a relatively basic project. I don't need anything for commerce set up, or anything I think of as "crazy". Just a very basic blog layout that looks professional on both desktop and mobile (the latter is a little lacking in particular right now). Archive links, Tags, ability to comment on posts, Contact Info, and one that preferably preserves the large-picture format the site currently has; that's about it, aside from being able to create the posts themselves.

If anyone is interested please send me a private message. This is very much still in the quoting phase, but I appreciate any assistance you all can provide me in getting an idea on cost.

Thanks in advance!

Hi,

I want to make a personal website, as basic as possible (I don't even want SEO or stuff like that).

This is totally a personal project, I don't want to generate revenue from it or anything like that (at least for now), I just want an old school website to link it to possible employers and contacts. I have about 12 years of coding experience but mostly low-level (DSP, ASM, C, C++) and scientific code (Python, R, Julia). So I'm not scared of doing it from scratch (even though it will be much uglier in the beginning than pre-generated websites) or using some basic lightweight libraries.

Until now I have been using github pages but I want to put some projects that require server side work, so I'll probably have to host somewhere else. I really like tildes' technical goals, but I don't know if the stack it uses is overkill for a personal website (I know I will need some database for some of the projects though).

My questions are:

• Is Pyramid a good choice or is it more appropriate for huge multiuser platforms? I do need some level of interaction between users (some of my more artsy projects are related to NLP) as well as interaction between user-server (some projects include simulations with parameters etc.).
• How does hosting/DNS work? How much should I expect to spend per year? I know there exist hosting services and also places like Heroku, I don't really know the difference between them or what should I be looking for.
• How much should I worry about security? In other words, what is the threat level? I don't plan to have confidential info in the website, or information about the users (other than a hash value). But should I be worried about other kind of threats?
• Is making a website as basic as possible and then keep on improving it as time goes a sound plan for a long-term personal project? With this I mean, will it be fun or will it be 100% frustrating and I should just go to (whatever hosting service that has premade web applications) and make my website there even though it will be bloated with scripts and stuff?
• Is there something I'm not asking that I should be asking? As I said I know how to code but it feels like web development is a completely different beast sometimes.
• Is there any compelling reason for me to use google analytics, SEO, all that stuff that big websites use? I have never understood the point for it in, for example, github pages.

Thanks for your help! Feel free to correct me on any stupid thing I may have said, I definitely speak from ignorance.

Edit: My biggest issue with this kind of format for conversations is that I cannot thank everybody at the same time, and responding to everyone with a thanks is definitely not contributing anything to the conversation. So I'll put it in an edit. Thanks for all your help! I'll probably be coming for more advice soon...

Hello ~comp,

I've been learning web development in my spare time with the hopes of one day becoming a professional web developer.

This is my latest project: https://github.com/farleykreynolds/toptenify. It's a small static site that pulls your listening data from the Spotify API.

I welcome any feedback on the design, code, or any other aspect of the project. Thank you!