Creating this Blog

Note: This blog post is terribly out of date.

Why?

I started creating this blog because of a few simple reasons:

1. WordPress is too much
2. Nothing is more extend-able than what I build myself
3. I wanted to try out a microframework (in this case dispatch).

Getting Started

Initially I started with a very simple (and common!) page layout for inspiration,

This flourished into the design you see today, originally with harsh reds and blacks but now with a variety of greys with a variety of header images. This was completed in Photoshop, with a full page layout as you see now completely planned out.

It was from this that the page was replicated exactly, which allowed me to tweak it as necessary.

Development

The entire development for the blog (so far) probably took around 8 hours including the amount of time playing about with the design and testing. I'm also using a modified version of parsedown. Most of the changes relate to code blocks and allowing me to create cool code boxes that allow line numbers which don't affect copy and pasting! Here's an example of some javascript that detects key presses:

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(){
    // vanilla document ready
    document.addEventListener("keyup", function(e){
        if(e.keyCode==83 && e.altKey==true){
            e.preventDefault();
            alert("Alt+S pressed");
       }
       if(e.keyCode==80 && e.altKey==true){
            e.preventDefault();
            alert("Alt+P pressed");
        }
        if(e.keyCode==79 && e.altKey==true){
            e.preventDefault();
            alert("Alt+O pressed");
        }
    });
}); 

I then started work on the actual blogging part of the site, created in php with dispatch (as discussed earlier).

What's Next?

There are still a lot of things I would like to add, namely

• Comments
• A proper user-system ^[1]
• Ability to integrate with my personal projects more

For now though, this is my blog, and hopefully the ease it affords me entices me to blog some more. We'll see though.

[1]: Since writing this I've added one!