Search for it on the internet, and there’s no shortage of results that will tell you just how easy it is to create a website. You may feel like you don’t know enough about how websites work, but that’s okay. You can create a website without needing to know anything about how a website works. Making a website today is easier than ever!

The first thing I asked myself was what kind of a website I wanted to have. This was easy to answer. Some kind of blog, where I could just post my rambling thoughts. A blog like any other blog. A simple blog. Mostly text, with the occasional image sprinkled in.

Then I thought about where I could host this website. As a beginner programmer, I came upon GitHub Pages. On the GitHub Pages website, there’s a little introduction video that explains that creating a website can be a hassle, even for those with the know-how. But not to worry. With GitHub Pages, it’s a lot easier. Indeed, there are many services like GitHub Pages that offer a similar message. I even came upon a website that boasted you could get everything up and running in just 5 minutes.

After deciding to go with GitHub Pages, I had to choose a theme. This step would be easy, I thought. I was looking for something simple. Something that focused on text. Something that people would find easy to read. Thus I began to try out some themes.

It didn’t take long for the dissatisfaction to set in with the themes I had available to me. Actually selecting a theme was effortless; all you had to do was navigate to the appropriately-named Theme Chooser and, just, like, pick a theme, yo. But strangely, I found that none of the available themes were particularly good. Even the one literally named ‘minimalist’.

Keep It Simple

At this point, I began to consider an alternative. I recall visiting some website that was like a blog, but it didn’t seem to have a design. It had an old-fashioned look, like it was made in another, previous age of the internet. The font would default to Times New Roman (on Windows), and text would render as wide as the browser window was wide. I thought: maybe I should forget all this theme nonsense and go down that road.

But I decided against it. In this day and age, people have certain expectations of a website, and it’s better to just meet to those expectations. Further, as I had desktop viewers in mind, text rendering as wide as the browser window¹ was a big no-no for me. Perhaps in the past, when desktop computers had small 14 inch screens, this was acceptable. In this age of large wide-screen and ultra-wide-screen monitors though, it would be too annoying to deal with. Better it is to just keep searching for the right theme, I decided.

The GitHub Pages documentation explained that you can choose from more themes if you installed Jekyll. I may have read some blogs where it said it was made with Jekyll. What is Jekyll? A static site generator, you say?

And down that rabbit hole I went. But before I installed Jekyll, I was curious to see some previews of those ‘more themes’ that GitHub Pages did not offer out of the box.

Any Theme You Like

While searching for Jekyll themes, I became more curious about other static site generators. How many of these static site generators are there?² How do they work? What, exactly, do they do? Is Jekyll ’the best one’? Are static site generators necessary if you just want a simple blog?

As I continued to browse for themes, I again became dissatisifed. There was no shortage of ‘snazzy’ themes, but what about simple themes? Unimpressed, and increasingly curious, I began to take a peek at themes for other SSG’s, such as Hugo and Zola.

While browsing Hugo themes, I found myself enjoying it more than when I looked at Jekyll themes. Everything just looked nicer. Looking back at it now, I wonder why that is. Hugo is newer than Jekyll. Perhaps themes are just a bit more modern-looking as a result. I’m not entirely sure what the reason is. In any case, I eventually found a theme I liked.

Then I began second-guessing. Is this really what I want? Maybe I should keep looking. As someone with more self-awareness than what’s good for me, I was acutely aware of just how much time I was wasting looking for a theme.

I began to ask myself: how many hours over the course of several days have I wasted already? What the heck is going on here? Just pick a theme, dumbass! It doesn’t matter! Focus on starting the blog. You can always change the theme later.

That’s right. I can always change the theme later. Knowing that, why is it still so hard to choose something?

If I had to buy new furniture, I would have a hard time choosing, because once I’ve had something delivered, I can’t just snap my fingers and change it to something else. And furniture ain’t free. Having difficulty deciding in that case would make sense.

So why would choosing a theme be this difficult? I already knew that when confronted with lots of choice, people act weird. But I haven’t studied this issue³ carefully.

Hold the Serifs, Please

Having browsed a multitude of themes, it slowly became clear what I was looking for. Single-column, sans serif, dark text on a white background.⁴ The font choice especially seemed to have the largest effect on the overall look of the site. That makes sense, given that what I was interested in dealt with text, not photographs or videos.

The difference between a serif and sans serif font is interesting. My own understanding–having no education in typography or what have you–is that serif fonts are just more intricate looking, and have a certain feel that suits story-telling. Sans serif is for stuff that’s more to the point.

On one hand, I was interested in telling stories. But I also wanted to just get to the point. I guess the story-telling I wanted to do, was more like giving explanations, rather than a Once upon a time… sort of thing.
I decided to restrict my search for themes with sans serif fonts.

(It’s technically possible to customize a theme’s font settings. Having already spent hours searching for a theme, I feared I would spend even longer customizing a theme to my liking, and quickly decided against it.)

Unfortunately, the websites on which I browsed for themes didn’t seem to have any options that let you search for something based on fonts, or layout even. I could only find a highly general search setting, such as ‘Blog’ or ‘Minimalist’. It seems WordPress does let you search for layout, but also has no serifs/sans serifs option.

So I decided to first focus on one-column layouts, which I could browse for by just paying attention to the thumbnail images, then manually filter out the ones with serif fonts from my list.

More time passed. And, at long last, I managed to settle on a theme.⁵ Somehow.

Lift-off

Now that we’re up in the air, you might ask: were the claims true, that making a website today is easier than ever?

In order to use Hugo instead of Jekyll with GitHub Pages, a bit more configuration than usual was needed. In the last few steps I undertook, my mind yet reeled from having dealt with such an endless sea of choice.
The dissatisfaction. The second-guessing. The agonizing. How I endlessly, endlessly browsed for themes!

Fortunately, a quick search on the internet told me all the configuration I needed to know. Why, it would take no more than a few minutes.
So, to answer the question: was it easy?

Yes. I suppose it was.