Why create your own website from the ground up with code when website builders can help you do it in minutes? Why spend hours learning languages like HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP when there are many emerging AI tools that can write that same code for you in seconds?
For most people, it wouldn’t make sense to spend the time learning web development. If you need a website for your business, hobby or portfolio it makes so much more sense to spend as little time as you can on the website so that you can get back to creating the things the website is trying to promote. So, why then, did I end up doing the complete opposite of what would make the most sense and create my own website from absolute zero? Why did I go down the path of creating everything from the project preview on the homepage to the tagging system on the blog completely from scratch? Well a few things actually: creative freedom, skill building and control.
With a background in code I wasn’t completely new to concepts like variables, functions, conditionals, and so on; this isn’t even my first website since I’ve used website builders like Wix and Google Sites in the past to create little personal websites since school. They weren't pretty nor were they useful but they were still websites nonetheless. But even back then I’ve had issues with trying to get exactly what I wanted out of those website builders. I’d have an idea in my head of how I wanted it to look and function and even though I could get something that was 80-90% perfect there was always something that the website builder just couldn’t do. Maybe it was that I couldn’t get an image to display the way I wanted or perhaps I couldn’t display a list of items in the way I had envisioned in my head. While these website builders have come a long way since then in terms of flexibility and feature sets there will always be a limiting factor of what your chosen solution can offer. Why wait for them to add the right tool when you could do it yourself?
Learning how to create a website from scratch removes that dependance on these solutions to have the tools you need and gives you the complete freedom to create elements, position them and animate them the exact way you want. This is of course providing that you have the skills, knowledge and time necessary to create it but as long as you’ve got the time you can gain the knowledge and skills. In my case the creative freedom and transferable skills was enough to convince me to take a step back from game development for a little bit and dip my toes into the realm of web development. But what really solidified my intent to invest my free time into creating a 100% custom website was the control aspect.
Using website builders is a great way to get something up and running quickly with the creation, hosting and maintenance being controllable through a single login. But that ease of setup can quickly turn into a headache if you’d ever want to change which provider you pay for those privileges since all of the potential solutions I’ve explored do not let you migrate/import your site to another platform. This means that if Wix for example were to increase their pricing well beyond what they’re competitors were charging you’ve basically got two options; pay up or start over. In my relatively limited experience as a game developer I’ve seen how companies like Unity can change policies and pricing and alter much of the industry's attitude towards their software. Many smaller developers who were using Unity’s game engine to power their projects were faced with a dilemma of whether to continue development using the Unity engine or start the time consuming process of reskilling and moving to a different engine.
So knowing that policies and pricing can change (sometimes very quickly) I wanted to give myself the best flexibility I can when it comes to where I host and how I develop my website. The best way I can see to do that is to own the raw files that make up the website so that if I wanted to move from self-hosting to AWS hosting or vice-versa I can. Sure, some things would probably need altering such as how the front-end connects to the database but the website from a design perspective wouldn’t have to be changed or rebuilt. It would be even easier if your chosen host provider supports Docker containers where the entire website can be uploaded in a single self-contained package along with all its dependencies. Just reupload and deploy.
The current version of my website is being self-hosted by myself with both the front and back end being completely within my control. Sure, it's not perfect and there are some design choices that I’m already second guessing but at the end of the day if I don’t like something about the website I can change it to whatever I want. Through the course of development I have noticed an improvement in my abilities with not only programming but also with design. I still wouldn’t call myself a capable web designer and I have so much further to go to reach a level of quality that’s even in the same ballpark as those that have made it their profession. However I don’t feel that I really need to. I’m an aspiring game developer after all; not a web designer.
Does that mean the time I’ve spent learning and developing these skills was wasted? No, I don't think so. Design skills are essential in game development and this experience in website design has hopefully given me a better understanding of things like UI/UX design and colour choices. I also have a functioning website that I can use to showcase my game development and skill progression in the way I want. This site will be a constant work in progress with design changes and interactivity implementations being made as my skills (hopefully) improve but if not; at least I can say I’ve got some experience as a web developer.