Updating My Website; What Needed to Change?

Hello everyone! This week, I updated my website, completely by hand.

What Changes I made

The goal of editing my website was to update it so it is more relevant. The first sweep I did of the site was earlier this year during the spring, making major changes to the color scheme and information.

The colors were orignally a desatured navy blue and deep red, however, they clashed way too much to be visually appealing, and did not fit with the brand image I am building. Generally, while my favorite colors are dark blue and red, they aren’t a good representation of what I do. With how much the two colors contrasted, it was too unserious.

So, I went to Pinterest! As silly as it may sound, given I am trying to make a more non-teenage-designed brand, Pinterest is good for aesthetics. I found a color scheme, and went with a gradient star as my logo. Nothing super complicated like before. The simplification of my logo is similar to how browser aesthetics/logos over years have gotten progressively more simple. I moved to more saturated colors, that blend together smoothly.

I see a lot of vibe coded websites (which are now defining the web design space, or become a predominant factor), and they typically have:

• gradient background
• font is usually typescript or something obvious. It is a little hard to explain, but it is never stylized right.
• Everything on the page is responsive (floating buttons, everything pops out when you hover
  
  

I have to keep in mind, while I want to modernize my design, I still want it to be human, because all of my work is handmade. So, first I blended the nav bar into the background, since a lot of personal websites I see for computer science have that style. I added some responsiveness, but not so much that the website feels like jelly the way vibe-coded ones do. I only add responsive elements to things that I want to stand out. I picked the font Inter because it is my favorite font, and the one I used for all of the Girls Who Code slides this year. I left Georgia as the header font, it looks fine as is.

I added my updated “about me,” as well as a freshly made newsletter. I also revamped my introduction! Overall, a long process. CSS is a rabbit hole of trying to make things look right.

No AI-Usage

I have a policy of writing by hand first, then searching the web for help, and in worst case, asking AI. For the most part, I am not a fan of AI generated code because of how ineffective it can be, especially when the project starts by hand. I understand it can be a positive, but for practice and personal preference, my projects are completely handmade unless otherwise specified.

Future Goals

In the future, here’s what I want to do next:

• I want to fix the home page/general UI/design of my blog
• I want to make my portfolio/projects look more presentable on my website
• I want to promote my newsletter more in the coming months

Final Thoughts

As frustrating as CSS can be, I overall enjoy the process and fruits of my work, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank you for reading, and see you next time. :)