How I built my first website in 4 years

Hi there and welcome back to my blog. How are you? I hope you are well. Today I’m going to talk about how I built my first website in 4 years. Before my diagnosis, I was a front end developer, someone who builds a website based on its looks and interactivity. As compared to a back end developer, someone who builds the functionality. So how did I do it?

  • Relearn everything
  • Design first
  • Typing exercises
  • Go through old work
  • Pomodoro technique
  • Zoom mode

Relearn everything

When I stopped getting dizzy spells on the computer, the first thing that I did was to get an b uDemy account. Because my gap was so long and with the web industry, everything moves so quickly, I had to relearn a couple of things and learn a bunch as well.

Design first

With anything, you have a design first. That’s why I got this design course on uDemy about web design. It goes through the basics of typography, colour schemes and layout. I found it very useful when it came to working on my dads website.

Typing exercises

When I volunteered at Carers Trust, I was asked to send an email. Because of my gap off the computer, I struggled to type up this email. From that day, I decided to learn how to type again. I originally started on https://www.learntyping.org/ and then eventually moved onto https://www.typingtest.com..

Going through old work

When I started designing my dads website, I took my website as a base for it. When it came to coding the site, I took the code from my website, stripped out the code that I didn’t need and created a base template for myself. A template that I can use for other clients. It was also a good idea, to go through my old work, to remind myself of what I was capable of doing.

A couple of months before designing my first website, a fellow brain tumor blogger called Claire Bullimore had asked me if I could use a featured image on my blog post. I told her, I don’t know how to do that. She then sends me a video on how to add a featured image to a blog post. However the featured image was above the heading of the blog post. I worked out where the featured image part of the code was and moved it.

I then told Clare, “I did it. The featured image is below the title now. Like I said before, I used to work with WordPress in developing websites and this little task gave me confidence that I can still do it. So thanks for showing me the featured image.”

Pomodoro technique

Before designing my first website, I had lunch with Joe, and he had told me a technique called the Pomodoro technique. The Pomodoro technique is really quite simple. What you do is you work for 25 minutes and then take a 5 minute break. Do that 4 times, then take a 20 minute break. After the long break, you repeat the pattern over and over again. I found myself to be more productive with my breaks.

When I took a long break, I would go for a quick 20-minute power nap. Just because of fatigue.

Zoom mode

Because my eyes are pretty much useless long-distance and staring on a screen with small text is hard for me, my laptop has a zoom-in mode where you hold a button down on the keyboard and scroll up or down to zoom in or out.

That’s it for now. Once again, I just want to thank a few people. Firstly, I would like to thank my mum, dad, sister and my Naughty Mamaji, for being by my side, throughout everything. I would like to thank everyone from BTS for sharing this with the community. I would like to thank Kanika, Shirley and everyone at Carers Trust for giving me the confidence to share my story and I would like to thank Joe for motivating me to get back on the horse. And I would like to thank everyone at the hospital, my family and friends and everyone who I’ve met on this journey.

Next time, I’m going to talk about the benefits of Bhangra and dancing. Please feel free to leave a comment and as always, if you buy something from Amazon, through the blog or click on an advert, 100% of the money that I get goes to charity.

Thanks and I shall see you soon.

Comments

comments