site update

September 17, 2025

i launched this website two weeks ago and since then i wrote the code from scratch, scrapped that to frankenstein other people’s layouts and codes, scrapped that and replicated the previous set-up from scrach again, scrapped that and rebuilt the website with a static site generator: hugo.

this is basically a massive answer to the first question of my previous blog. big thanks to nenrikido, without whom i wouldn’t learn about static site generators in the first place.

a lot of tutorials on making a hugo theme were created before its update, so i couldn’t copy and paste my way through (well. not the whole time). it took me foreverrrr to realize that i could take a look at its update log on the docs site. lol. the things you’d miss as a self-taught coder.

sidenote: my gf is practicing the trumpet right now because she can

documentation is tricky for me to comphrehend because i have so many holes in my knowledge regarding what any of it means. raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

anyways,

in layouts > _default

baseof (the html template that would apply for all pages on the website) home (what the home page/index.html ought to look like, defined as {{ main }} to be inserted into the baseof template)

page (what “regular” pages look like. example would be the credits page)

“A section is a top-level content directory or any content directory containing an _index.md file.” (the index file = main/home page to me. section is a “collection” of pages, e.g. blog posts. although i have created a custom /blog layout under the theme folder)

i anticipate having another section to list shrine pages, webweaves, recipes?, projects?

partials are code snippets to implement into the baseof template! default ones are head, header, footer, etc, etc. has its own folder!

i’ve created a separate folder for my about page in which there is a single.html that details exactly how i want it to look. not a regular page because i wanted the same vibe as the home page but with different post-its.

layout>blog! with two files: list.html and page.html. due to following older tutorials Before the Update, i was under the impression that list.html and section.html were different things. could i have put the code into the default section.html and got the same result without creating a list.html? possibly. i have not tried.

the {{ range site.RegularPages }} looped had me panicked because it included about and the credits page while i only wanted it to loop through the blog posts!!! um, turns out i just needed to switch site to Page instead. hugo’s smart apparently, it knows to pull from blog. bc yknow. i named the subfolders that. {{ range .Pages.ByDate.Reverse }} to list the posts from new to old. i suppose i could use {{ range site.RegularPages}} for a sitemap situation but i haven’t done planning for that yet

taxonomy.html, term.html, i have no idea what they do. would need to experiment with them and look at the live preview for changes. im a visual-kinaesthetic learner?

well i figured some things out! taxonomy my taglist in the front matter, the terms the tags. i’ve figured out how to display the blog posts with these. went through a lot of grief trying to figure out how to list all everything within a specific thing. my brain had me thinking about splicing strings. i forgot its all nested and hugo uses templates. so i could just use the same shit i’ve been using. i literally learaned this lesson with the blog pages, but it didn’t stick then.

shortcodes are .html files within the root folder > layouts > shortcodes. they’re how i generate a date within a blog post. basically the generate-date.html has this:

{{ now | dateFormat “January 2, 2006” }}

which allows me to put in September 20, 2025 (referencing the .html) into a blog post archetype (another word for template, but this time for .md files specifically). so for every blog post i generate in the terminal, it would come with the date! in this case: September 20, 2025 . uhhh i do this because pasting {{ now | dateFormat “January 2, 2006” }} onto a blog post only pastes {{ now | dateFormat “January 2, 2006” }} onto that blog post. we’re going back to the baseof.html with this one.

what’s next?

1. figuring out this front matter stuff because i think this is how i can implement a tagging system? i’d love to have a floating sidebar2 on the right that lists all my categorical tags for the blogs.
2. my stickers!!! slowly but surely learning about all the different units that css supports. most of my units are in pixels (thanks to my tumblr theme background, that’s all i saw) which doesn’t allow for scaling and changes in window dimension. i want to have sticker placement that’s responsive for the most part. on mobile devices, that’s where i sacrifice them.
3. a pagination system for the individual blog pages?
4. i’m also noticing that my lime cursor is only a lime when hovering over pages that main.css affects. so there’s a lot of space where it’s just a regular cursor. DEVASTATING.
5. uhhh im sure there’s more but im eager to deploy the vault and then take a HOT SHOWER for the first time in EIGHT DAYS.
6. oh right, there’s probably a way for me to make shortcuts for assets because having to type all that shit out is sooooooooo
7. confession: i royally fucked up somewhere after deploying so now im updating this blog post the following night on the 17th. it was initially created on the 15th and i’ve been changing the date/time in the front matter LOL. well. you can see that i figured out #1 almost immediately.
8. eventually i will understand how to use pipes for the graphics instead of doing < img src > all the damn time. maybe shortcodes?? although i dont understand hugo well enough to be replacing blocks of html. i think for now, i’m good where i am