Do you want to not build a website? Well, I've built a website or two in my time, but I've spent probably about 10 years, not building this one. Today, I'm gonna explain how.
Who is this blog entry for? Well, I don't really know. But, if you're able to use my advice to not build a website - or for some other purpose - I'm glad I could help.
Around 10 years ago, I used to regularly post to my WordPress blog. It was predominantly a tech blog, with an occasional sprinkling of politics.
I set my old WordPress blog up some time in 2011, and quite happily posted to it for a couple of years. However, there were a few minor things I didn't like about it.
I felt like, with the WordPress code base, the site wasn't really mine. WordPress had a lot of moving parts that I didn't understand, and it felt a bit bloated for my liking.
Because of this, I made a decision: I was going to rebuild my website.
If you want to follow in my footsteps, you're in luck. I'm going to tell you everything I know about how not to build a website.
Do you already have a website? Have you already built a website, added content to it, and shared links to it with your friends?
Well, if so, despair not. You can effectively kill it in just two easy steps! And better yet, you don't even need to take it off the internet.
You may already have a website - but is it really that good? Aren't there a few things you'd like to change about it?
Whatever is wrong with your current website, you may think you can fix it. You may think you can just put up with these minor issues. Well, you are wrong.
You must rebuild your website, from scratch. You need to make this decision right now, and never reconsider it.
While you're building your new website, you must stop working on the old one. This step is crucial.
In the case of my old WordPress blog, I simply stopped writing new blog entries. If you have a blog, you can do the same.
If you have some other kind of website, there's not much I can do to help you there. You'll find your own way to abandon it, but you must figure that part out yourself.
If abandoning your website seems a little too deliberate, that's because you're thinking about it all wrong. You're not abandoning your webite; you're rebuilding it!
Your new website will surely be ready soon enough, and when it is, you can get right back to blogging, or whatever it is that you do on your website.
After a few short years - months, really - your old website may still exist on the internet, but it won't really matter.
A word of caution.
While building your new website, you might find that you've bitten off more than you can chew.
You might be tempted to give up and use WordPress, or some other CMS you've used before.
Worse yet, you might be tempted to dust off your old webiste, and start doing stuff there again.
Well, you could use WordPress. If you did, you'd be able to get a website up and running in about 20 minutes - but is that really a good idea?
Building a website is all about learning web development and writing code. If you use WordPress, you're cheating. Worse yet, you're not a real web developer.
As you attempt to build your website, there are a few things you can do to significantly delay it coming to fruition.
Are you new to software development?
Do you know the fundamental concepts of software development, but not how to use them together? Do you know absolutely nothing about databases?
If so, don't let that stop you.
Every great software developer starts out by building little projects, building up their knowledge as they go along - but who the hell has time for that?
No. No boring todo apps for you. You need to start big. Unreasonably big. After all, you're not a great sofware developer; you're the best.
As you work on your code base, you may have an inclination to change how you're approaching the project. This is more likely, the newer you are to software development.
Whenever that happens, start again.
Do you find PHP ugly and difficult to write? Maybe you should use some other language for your back end. If you do that, though, you'll have to start again.
Do you feel similarly about relational databases and SQL? Well, MongoDB stores your data in JSON. That's much easier! And you can use it. All you have to do is, start again.
Is your JavaScript getting out of hand? Well, TypeScript can help you there with static typing. It can work with your existing code, but it's probably easier if you just start again.
Have you not touched your project in 6 months, and forgotten where everything is? You guessed it: Start again!
The more you start again, the more you'll delay the project - and if keep it up forever, you'll never have that website built.
There are millions of websites on the internet. Yours needs to stand out.
Anyone can build a mediocre website. Many people can build a good website. But only one person can build a perfect website. Is it you? Well, there's only one way to find out.
If you already have a website, remember why you're building the new one: because the old one isn't perfect. If the new one isn't perfect either, then what was the point?
If you're perfect, then building a perfect website shouldn't be a problem. If you can't do that, why bother?
As you're building your new website, you must aim for complete feature parity with your old one.
If your old site has comments, your new site must have comments. If the old one has search, the new one must have search.
Remember: Your new website is replacing your old website. With that in mind, what good will it do if you remove features that used to exist on the old site?
If you don't have an old website, this tip can probably still help you.
Perhaps there's some other website on the internet that inspired you - something similar to the website you want to build. It probably has a bunch of great features.
If so, you might want to aim for feature parity with that website - and if you attempt this, you'll be stuck on it for ages.
Whether you're rebuilding an existing website, or building your very first, you probably have some ideas for it - a vision of what it will be, one day.
You may be tempted to start off with a very basic website, and then build it up over time. Well, don't.
You have a lot of great ideas for your website. You don't want all those ideas to be trapped inside your head, do you?
No, that won't do at all. Whatever features you have in mind, you must implement them now - no matter how long it takes you.
I need to address the elephant in the room. I claim to be an expert at not building websites, and yet, I've gone and built one.
Despite my efforts over the last decade, I made some fatal mistakes.
I'm going to share these mistakes with you, so you can learn from them, and so that you might avoid repeating them.
So, where did I go wrong?
When it was time for me to get a job, I decided to get into software development. I felt that it was the right job for me. I like writing code, and I think I'm pretty good at it.
When I eventually got a job, I got better at working on projects. I learned how to use things like git and Jira. I learned how large software projects are built and maintained.
As time went on, I started writing code for my employer. I built multiple new applications from scratch, and with each new app, I got better at building them.
As a result, my personal projects no longer consist of me cluelessly writing code, with no focus on individual tasks. I document what needs to be done, and then I do it.
At some point, I was asked to write blog entries for my employer's website. It was partly my idea, and having written on my own blog in the past, I knew I could handle it.
I was told by multiple people that my writing was really good. I also got some pointers from my employer's head of marketing, on how to write better blog entries.
I realised that I'm much better at writing now than I was on my old WordPress blog.
I was happy to write for my employer's blog, marketing a compliance solution that we sell - but I wanted a bit more creative freedom.
I want to write about other things. I want to write about politics. I have a lot to say, and I need my own platform for it.
Before, my desire to get back into blogging wasn't that strong. It was an afterthought. It was a "that'd be nice" sort of thing.
Now, it's something I really want to do. So I built a website.
Now motivated to build a website, I decided to go about it sensibly.
I wanted to get something put together quickly. Admittedly, I put it off for quite a while - but when I got to it, I was able to put this site together in just a few days.
This website is nothing fancy. It's a little ugly in places. It doesn't have comments or search. Blog entries don't have tags or categories. But I don't really care.
I'll want to make improvements to the site as time goes on - but for now, I'm just glad to have a blog again.
Not all hope is lost. I may have built a website, but that doesn't really matter - not yet, anyway.
If I don't get back into the swing of writing new blog entries, this site will go the way of my old WordPress blog pretty quickly: It'll still exist, but no one will really care.
Will I abandon this site, as I abandoned my old WordPress blog all those years ago? Only time will tell. 🤞
No AI tools were involved in writing this blog entry.
Published 2024-01-07.