I’ve been mousing deep into the witching hours: brewing Ems, pixels and dark purple hexes. It took long hours of muddle and toil to cast a new gemmafranks.com site.
I chose WordPress. It can’t be that hard to create your own bespoke website thought I. It’s not as if I’d have to learn how to code. Turns out, constructing a WordPress site using the default Gutenberg editor is tricky and fiddly. Maybe if I’d systematically gone through all the tutorials, I’d have found it easier. But I’m not a manual-reading kind of person. Nealey, the video tutorial guy, became a familiar face on my screen in the end.
I proudly showed my teenaged children the results of my red-eyed labour when I was ready to launch my site.
“Look, I’ve created a custom scroll-to-top button, in my logo colours, and when you click on it, the page glides back to the top. Isn’t that neat?”
My comment was met with benevolent smiles. They are Gen Z teens – digital natives, zoomers. They never knew a time without online connectivity.
My site is best viewed on a desktop, as the WordPress developers apparently designed it that way. I configured my site for mobile and tablet viewing but it still doesn’t look as good. Nevertheless, the design doesn’t detract from the content and that’s ultimately what it’s all about.
I’ve entered a new realm. I now know the difference between Ems and pixels, and padding versus margins.
I plan to keep growing and refining my site as I build on my newfound knowledge. I’m hoping my newly befriended widgets and hex codes will aid me on the journey to authordom.
Written by Gemma Franks. Image: by jutube via Pixabay.
