I wanted to create a personal website as a way to connect with people with similar interests and share my personal projects. It was also a way for me to improve my understanding of python and start learning about web development. I chose the Django framework since it used python and was marketed as a streamlined way to build more than a simple website. My vision is to eventually use the flexibility of Django to incorporate various python packages and build some web applications.
Since I had zero experience with web development, I wanted to walk through a tutorial that teaches you the basics of building a simple website. Microsoft has a clear tutorial using Visual Studio Code and Django. It gives step by step instructions and explains the purpose of each step with great detail. After completing the tutorial, I felt more comfortable creating my own website. There are great resources on the internet for almost any question, such as w3schools and stackoverflow. I am also very fortunate that my brother, Phillip Yuen, is a web developer and is willing to teach me the fundamentals. He showed me how to use a colorlib template as a starting point and I customized it to make it my own.
The most important lesson that I learned from creating this website is that anyone can do this, it just takes time and determination. Web development is similar to virtual lego blocks. There are many different “blocks” available and putting the blocks together will create the website. Learning how to correctly use each “block” is the hard part and reading documentation is no fun but necessary to learn the functionality of each component. I’ve included a list of resources that I found extremely useful below.