6 ms·

Show HN: my first attempt to build a personal website

1 points by msangi 14y ago

msangi 14y ago
I just tried to write my personal website from scratch. It is written in PHP and I tried to make it as responsive as possibile. I still have to work a lot on the contents, but since it is never too early to ship I liked the idea to go online and ask for feedbacks as soon as possible. If you want to have a look at the code, it is on github. Feel free to fork it, use it for your website and to collaborate with me in the development. https://github.com/mariosangiorgio/personal-website https://github.com/mariosangiorgio/personal-website
jamesbritt 14y ago
First, congrats on making something. Second, I don't think HN is really the place to get this kind of feedback, but that's just me. That said: It looks crowded, and a few things seems not to line up. You seem to like a clean, minimalist grid layout (I do too, often). However, the grids and the typography need to mesh and flow well. For example, "Featured projects" seems to float about midway alongside "Mario Sangiorgio." I would suggest looking at Typogridphy http://csswizardry.com/typogridphy/preview/# or perhaps Twitter Bootstrap, and then poke around http://www.minimalsites.com http://www.minimalsites.com and get a feel for how grid-based minimalist sites tend to work. Not that you should copy anything there, but if you look at enough of them you start picking up subtle features. You have more room on the page, make some use of it and give you content room to breath.
- msangi 14y ago
  Thank you for your hints! Later I will look at the pages you linked and I sure will try to improve my design. Unfortunately I still have to learn a lot of things about how to properly do web-design and the reason I posted my site here was exactly to get some feedbacks.
  - jamesbritt 14y ago
    It takes time. The use of CSS frameworks is a topic of debate on HN; I find them very handy in getting something attractive and usable up fast. Then you can play around and customize it and get more experience.
krapp 14y ago
Putting your own website up on github? That's an interesting idea. Offhand, though, have you considered using a templating system like Twig? If you ever do want to make a major change to the layout, that would make it a lot cleaner. I've used (even maybe abused) ini-as-data files in some of my projects so it's cool to see someone else doing that. I did notice there didn't seem to be a link to navigate back to the projects page, you might consider working on the navigation a bit. Looks nice, though.
- msangi 14y ago
  Actually it is not hosted on github. I use it to save the source code. I am new to web development and I don't know Twig, but it seems definitely worth having a try. Thanks for your advices!

1 points by msangi 14y ago

I just tried to write my personal website from scratch. It is written in PHP and I tried to make it as responsive as possibile. I still have to work a lot on the contents, but since it is never too early to ship I liked the idea to go online and ask for feedbacks as soon as possible. If you want to have a look at the code, it is on github. Feel free to fork it, use it for your website and to collaborate with me in the development. https://github.com/mariosangiorgio/personal-website https://github.com/mariosangiorgio/personal-website

jamesbritt 14y ago

First, congrats on making something. Second, I don't think HN is really the place to get this kind of feedback, but that's just me. That said: It looks crowded, and a few things seems not to line up. You seem to like a clean, minimalist grid layout (I do too, often). However, the grids and the typography need to mesh and flow well. For example, "Featured projects" seems to float about midway alongside "Mario Sangiorgio." I would suggest looking at Typogridphy http://csswizardry.com/typogridphy/preview/# or perhaps Twitter Bootstrap, and then poke around http://www.minimalsites.com http://www.minimalsites.com and get a feel for how grid-based minimalist sites tend to work. Not that you should copy anything there, but if you look at enough of them you start picking up subtle features. You have more room on the page, make some use of it and give you content room to breath.

msangi 14y ago
Thank you for your hints! Later I will look at the pages you linked and I sure will try to improve my design. Unfortunately I still have to learn a lot of things about how to properly do web-design and the reason I posted my site here was exactly to get some feedbacks.
- jamesbritt 14y ago
  It takes time. The use of CSS frameworks is a topic of debate on HN; I find them very handy in getting something attractive and usable up fast. Then you can play around and customize it and get more experience.

krapp 14y ago

Putting your own website up on github? That's an interesting idea. Offhand, though, have you considered using a templating system like Twig? If you ever do want to make a major change to the layout, that would make it a lot cleaner. I've used (even maybe abused) ini-as-data files in some of my projects so it's cool to see someone else doing that. I did notice there didn't seem to be a link to navigate back to the projects page, you might consider working on the navigation a bit. Looks nice, though.

msangi 14y ago
Actually it is not hosted on github. I use it to save the source code. I am new to web development and I don't know Twig, but it seems definitely worth having a try. Thanks for your advices!