SandorHQ — First Impressions
After configuring the foundation, and making sure it can serve static content, it was time to figure out what I want my guests to see when they visit my domain. Another fact that required no contemplation is that I’m going to need a responsive layout.
Anyone Can Cook
Chef Gusteau said in the movie Ratatouille, “anyone can cook”, and it was discovered by one of the characters what he really meant by this: “Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”
This wisdom can certainly be applied for the web, that is, a guest can use any device with any configuration, under limitless circumstances. As long as a user agent — often assumed, it’s just a fancy name for browsers — can communicate with the server, it should receive content that it can parse and display to the best of its current abilities. Yes, I said “current abilities,” because a guest could rotate their device at any time, they can enable or disable certain components or they could suddenly lose high bandwidth connection and have to fall back to messenger pigeons, and still the content should remain accessible.
I even dare to say that nowadays it’s a crime not to serve responsive content.
Let’s Not Waste Time
Yet another common wisdom is “less is more,” which is just as true for my case, especially so that I’m not planning on dazzling you with my gorgeous photographs or my skills in finding meaningless stock images to decorate my headers with.
I have chosen to create a nordic, minimalist look and feel, because the content I’m offering here is technical and straight to the point. Maybe a month later I decided to create a new design, and, thanks to the efficient, modular arrangement of stylesheets, templates and asset files it took only an hour or so to bring the update to life.
The document structure is rather simple – just a few categories –, and most of it will be available both in English and in my native Hungarian. This suggests that a simple navigation component with translation links will suffice.
Having said these, the joy of unpacking a present was to come next. Thanks to the VPS whatever server-side technology or framework I wanted to use, the only limit was my imagination and willingness to experiment.