Joe's Blog

Project: Website

By Joe Belli | October 31, 2025 | #HTML, #CSS, #GitHub, #VSCodium, #Linux, #Debian, #personalproject, #website

A Screenshot of Joe Belli's Website.

Lately, I've been spending time working on my website. I decided to build it by hand because for now, I want something simple to concentrate on my writing, and I wanted full control of what I write. It's just a simple website for news, new releases, blog article releases, and whatever else strikes my fancy.

Have you ever made something yourself, where you're reluctant to show it to anyone because you think no one is going to like it, or no one is going to care about your accomplishment. You're scared of the scrutiny, but at the same time, you're proud of your accomplishment and would like to show it off a little... warts and all. It took a long time for me to get to where I'm at, but as usual, it's probably best to start at the beginning.

Researching and Testing Other Platforms

I spent some time researching and testing other platforms. The TD:LR; is I chose none of them. I wound up creating my own blog from scratch. No, it's not a blog in the traditional sense. There's a lot of features missing, I know. But I wanted something simple to concentrate on my writing, and this wound up being the only answer that suited my situation.

Medium.com:

I tried to sign up at Medium.com. But for some reason, Medium.com would not let me set up an account there. So, that's one platform I don't have to worry about.

Substack.com:

Substack.com had a nice-looking blog, but that's not all that Substack is. Suckstack is a newsletter sign-up deal, it's a blog, it's a podcasting studio, it's a video production platform -- It's too many things all at once. And not only that, the settings kept changing, the features kept disappearing, and rather than using the platform, I was struggling and fighting with the platform. Once it decides on what it wants to be, I'm sure it will be great. But for now, I'm not ready for all of that. So, that's Substack off the list.

Blogger.com:

So, then I went to Blogger. Gmail's blogging platform has been around for a long time. And while using it was great, and it was quick to get started, all of the blog templates looked so antiquated. They have places in their blog templates for a Profile that doesn't exist anymore. And you either chose a blog template that had bits that didn't work, or you chose a template from 1991. Some of them aren't even mobile-friendly anymore. I hope they decide to update the Blogger. Because that would be great. I would use Blogger in a heartbeat. Just not in it's current state.

Wordpress:

With Wordpress, you get two options: You can either blog directly on their platform, or you could host your own website and use Wordpress to be the CMS (Content Management System) for your blog. I started with the idea of hoSosting my own website. It seemed the more profession route to take. After signing up for this and signing up for that. This is free, and this isn't. I found that I was messing about with all of the signups and the templates so much that I never got the chance to actually blog. I got frustrated and left everything and walked away from the idea of having my own website. I never did even try Wordpress.com, and blogged under their platform. By this time, I was disgusted with the whole process.

GitHub and Netlify

Then I remembered that GitHub had a "Pages" feature where you could essentially "host" a website through the "Pages" directions. Make a "Page," and you got a website. I thought that since I wanted to get back into front-end web development, that this might be the way to go. It would be a lot of work, but it seemed like the way to go.

So, I gave it a shot. I'm using Linux on my computer with Debian as my Distribution, and GNOME as my Desktop Environment. I downloaded the .deb version of VS Code. Set it up. Signed up for a new GitHub Account (@atlantajoe) and started fumbling a website together.

I tried a few times to build a website for myself. Starting over again once I got totally lost or frustrated. But in the end, I think I did okay. The thing about using GitHub, is that you can very easily see the progress I've made. A website is a living, breathing document. And yes, it doesn't look the best it can, I hope one day I'll be able to chip away at enough marble to produce a better-looking website.

6 Things I Like About My Website

  • It is very easy to turn into a mobile friendly website: I'll add this feature onto the Second Revision plans. I want to get back into writing articles. I have this big project in mind that I can't wait to start planning.
  • My design. It needs a lot of work, but at least now I know that I don't like this color combination. It seems very dark. And I'm not a dark person. I have a bright personality, and I'd like my website to show that as well.
  • Because I'm writing everything in HTML and CSS, I'm can add a lot of features to my website. I like to add a lot of links, YouTube Video embeds, IMDB page references, anything that I can get a hold of to make the topic that I'm writing about in a particular article, even more understandable.
  • I would have thought that I needed to do research on how to accomplish certain things in HTML and CSS, but honestly, I remembered the most of it. I had trouble getting @font-face to work properly, but other than that, I remembered everything else I had learned. Good job to me.
  • While I'd eventually like to move away from the dark background, the dark background makes all the brighter colors on top of it really pop out.
  • I was able to use a trick I had learned in CSS. If I want to “hide” a section. Include it on the webpage, but hide it from view. I created a special “hide” class. And in the CSS, I assigned a `display: none;` So while the “hide” class is on the HTML, those sections are hidden. When I want to reveal them again, I simply remove the “hide” class altogether, and it appears.

I am not a web designer. (Could you tell?) I had found a website that I had tried to emulate, but I really didn't do a good job simply because of my limitations. I only know HTML and CSS. I think they used Tailwind or something like that, so I'll have to look into that.

But the self-deprecating humor aside, I'm proud of myself for doing a complete website. There's a lot more to do, and there's a lot more I could add. But for only knowing HTML and CSS, I think I did a pretty good job. No, it's not going to win any awards. But I'm proud of it… for now.

4 Things That I'd Like To Add For The Next Revision

Here are some pie in the sky thoughts for the next revision. I don't know how much of this will become reality, but it's nice to dream.

  • I would like to make the website conform to different screens easily. I'd like to make my website more mobile and tablet friendly. I could always try something like Bootstrap or one I saw that looked good: MaterializeCSS, to help me with that. I've always wondered about using something like Bootstrap. I didn't like the idea of adding all of that design to my structure. Maybe that's just me, and I need to get over myself. But how welcomed is something like Bootstrap in web design?
  • In making my website mobile friendly, I'd like to add a mobile menu. One that you access by touching a hamburger menu, and that disappears about you make a selection.
  • I'd like to learn more about using :root in my CSS. I personally really don't see the benefit in this just yet. But I think that's because I'm not dealing with a more complex website.
  • I had transformed a lot of my pictures into a WEBP format to make the website light and responsive. In my research, I came across a tag in HTML that I'd like to explore more. It may be something new, I don't remember seeing it before. So, it may not be something new, but it's new to me.

And I'm sure I'll come up with some more ideas, but here's a good place to start. It's very much like that old adage, “Rome wasn't built in a day.” And neither is a website. But regardless, I'm having a lot of fun learning, exploring, and coming up with some new ideas. Until next time, take care.