The story of how I made my website is a lesson in perseverance . . . and grit. In case you want to build a website of your own, or pursue some dream or project of your own, here’s my tale.
I had a vision—and little else—of what I wanted my website to be. The challenge was how to get from A to B; how to make my vision a reality. I lacked the knowledge and expertise (and experience) to build a website; in short, I was clueless, as I’d never tried to make my own website before. Since I was without said clue as to what to do, I had several false starts before I got underway, as I went around in circles before I figured out the navigation system—left the harbor—and set sail in the open sea, as it were.
There were many challenges and obstacles that I had to face and overcome, most of which stemmed from the fact that I was unsure what to do, and unfamiliar with the process of website creation and how to use the website builder tools that were provided. Since that was the case, I fumbled my way through the darkness towards the light, as it were, and, as with many other things in life, I learned by trial and error, and through the many mistakes I made.
I selected a demo template to use as the basis and foundation for my website, but I was unable to see how to make it fit in with the vision I had for my website, and how to make it work for me in order to make my vision a reality. Since I was unable to make that template work, as I failed to see how I could adapt it to meet my needs, and meet the vision of what I wanted my website to be, because, again, I didn’t know how to get it from A (a demo template) to B (a unique website all my own), I decided to drop that template and switch to another.
It took me several tries to get the new template going, and there were mistakes aplenty, which I was unsure how to fix, or undo what I did; so I scrapped the whole template, and all the changes I had made, and started over with the same template, from scratch, again. As luck would have it, I was only in the initial stages of website creation on that template and thus had only made minimal progress at that point; therefore, it was quite easy—on this next attempt—to pick up where I left off, and recreate the work I had done on the previous templates. On my last attempt, when I really bore down, I managed to make some progress, and the website began to take shape. The vision I had for my website began to form in a more complete way; it started to become a reality, and was on its way to coming into a more complete focus, and a more complete vision of my website than the one I already had (which consisted namely of what pages and what features I wanted on my website).
Of course, I still made mistakes, even though I was making progress; but I was able to recover anything that I discarded or deleted, or fix said mistakes. I learned along the way, how to do the things I wanted to do, in order to achieve my goal and my vision. I invested time in using the website platform’s help and how-to video’s features, which paid dividends. Both of these were helpful. The part that consumed the most time, at least it seemed that way to me, was the time spent to look up pictures and images in the public domain to match what I wanted, as part of my vision for the website.
It used up as much time as it did, and I was determined, and had dedicated myself, to locate just the right pictures, without any idea of what they were, or what was available in the public domain that fit the image I had, and the theme that was developing, for my website. Of course, writing comes into play in this too.
I worked on the writing for what I wanted to post, initially, on the website—all the writing you see on the website, for one—my author biography and my first blog post for another, and ended up ripping both of the latter two apart and writing them again; and rewriting them, based on the suggestions and feedback I got. I spent a good quantity of time going over them and caressing them and molding them into the shape that you see now; their final form. (For now anyway!)
The last step was to have people look at the website prior to its launch, and tell me what they think. All this feedback was instrumental to the launch, successfully, of my website. There were many times in the creation of the final version of the website, especially near the end, where I thought I may have to have someone come in and help me with this, because I didn’t know what I was doing, and I managed to persevere through that, and push on to finish the website.
I managed, in the process of building the website to figure out how to do the things I wanted it to do, or that I was unsure if they could be done to get the look I wanted, in order to make the vision of my website a reality. While I worked on the project, I overcame frustration, confusion, uncertainty, doubt, wanting to quit and give up, wanting to have someone come in and help me with this, or do it for me; I started over with a demo template five times, and innumerable attempts on each of those five times, before I successfully finished it and created the website that you see here before you; I also overcame a lack of knowledge, skills, and experience in order to achieve my goal. In the end, there are things that I’d like to change, and the website is far from perfect, but I’m happy with the results.