Building The Website - Part 1
I spent the entire Labor Day Weekend rooted in my chair working on the website. Not kidding. Something about me, I have that kind of obsessive focus when I’m on a task
Early this year, I built a fancy Family Reunion website on Squarespace for my peeps. The event happened in July. Kinda meh. Since we aren’t having another reunion for at least two years, I figured I might as well take it down to build Octane’s site. I’m already paying the subscription, ya know?
Okay… Now I’m no professional web designer. I struggle with WordPress and I’m terrible at HTML & CSS. I’m not stupid. I guess I could learn and master it like most things I tackle. OR… I can just use Squarespace or Wix pre-built templates.
Yes, I know I’m getting “ripped” off. SS and Wix ain’t cheap. Both come at a PREMIUM cost. But it beats having to teach myself to code. Guys.. I’m a filmmaker. I don’t want to spend the man hours to be a website developer designer dude. I just want to get the site up!
Even still… As simple as modifying Squarespace’s 7.1 templates are advertised to be.. I find them annoying, extremely frustrating, and quite limiting. They are glitchy as hell. And it… it.. friggin’ fights me. I want an asset to go there, and SS say “no” and puts it over there. The hell!
Sometimes, I spend hours to figure out simple tasks… like linking Vimeo videos to text and making them appear in a lightbox. Or making Vimeo embeds size dynamically for mobile and desktop. Or making dropdown text a different color. ARRRGH! You get what I’m saying.
But after putting in the hours… and hours… looking up questions… asking questions.. experimenting… cussing like a sailor… it’s starting to get done. So for those who might build your site yourselves… in 2024, we use and recommend:
Namecheap for domain hosting
Vimeo for video hosting.
Google Workspace for email hosting, calendars, docs, and YouTube.
Squarespace for web hosting (<- barely!)
ChatGPT for web page copy (summaries, call-to-actions, etc)
Canva and Midjourney for web page artwork and logos
What I use ain’t the cheapest. But I think you get the most value from the choices I’ve given you.
