More Site Progress

Since I last posted, I've now added categories and a tags page to the site, both of which are available on the sidebar. Having a super simple layout is all well and good, but once there are more posts here it will quickly become difficult to find anything without a method of navigation. The theme I'm using is slightly outdated so it was a bit of a headache to implement, but I got there in the end!

I've also tweaked a few colours in the css and added a .gitignore file to my repository in order to prevent the public folder being added. Netlify handles the build of the site so it was unnecessary clutter.

I actually used ChatGPT to help me with a lot of this. I have many negative opinions about the use of AI, but in this instance it was actually helpful and taught me a few things. Of course it did make some mistakes which I had to correct, but on the whole it did a pretty good job. It helped me to fix one of my own mistakes too - I'd mistakenly made changes to the theme files, when I should have placed my own copies into the layouts folder and modified those. This caused me to fork the theme (did I mention I was a complete noob at this?).

By this time my brain was slightly fried (understatement!), so ChatGPT then did a pretty good job of walking me through the steps needed to correct my noob mistakes. I backed everything up (one thing I never neglect to do, bitter experience teaches you this!), added a clean version of the theme as a git submodule and then reapplied my changes. This time in the right place! I then deleted the forked theme repository and mercifully everything was still how it should be.

This was all a teeny bit stressful but also exciting. It's been a long time since I used Hugo (2018 in fact, longer than I thought) and even then I hadn't gone beyond the very basics. I do like to learn new things though, and it all worked out relatively well in the end. I'm pretty sure there are still some things to fix (the css especially is probably not the cleanest to say the least), but for now I'm happy. Let's just call this site experimental.

I still need to implement webmentions. I did take a quick look at it, but it doesn't seem that simple to do so it will have to wait for another day when I have more time. I'd like to do it though as I love the idea of being as Indieweb friendly as possible. I just wish the implementation was a little less daunting.

All I need do now is write some proper posts as opposed to site updates. These are handy for me to have in order to look back and see the changes / mistakes that I've made, but I'm pretty sure it's not exactly an exciting read for others! 😄