Graduating from Codeclan’s Software Development course on the eve of the UK Covid-19 lockdown was not ideal, to say the least. But that’s not to say it’s been all bad. Since graduating, I’ve been using this time to keep learning and practicing skills to stay sharp.

One of the things I knew I wanted to do was make a personal website. I put it on the back burner as there were other things I wanted to explore first (deployment of previous projects, some more intense React concepts). However, 3 weeks ago, I decided I wanted to know more about GraphQL. I’d heard that Gatsby was great for static sites and used GraphQL, so it seemed like the logical choice, and away I went.

One thing I noticed right away is that the Gatsby documents are hard core and more importantly, well written. I spent the first few days working through their various tutorials and found them to be really well laid out.

Then, I decided to switch gears and work on the design and layout of the site. My tactic lately has been to design everything in pure HTML and CSS to start, and then once I’m happy with it, migrate it to my project.

I say “once I’m happy with it”, but the reality is this site went through 4 or 5 design iterations and some outside input before I was finally happy with the result.

I also took some time to figure out how to make the site as accessible as possible. Some things, like ensuring that images had alt text, were easy enough. One thing I found particularly interesting though was to try to navigate the site without a mouse. I’d never done this before and was surprised at how terrible the experience initially was. For instance, I have previously often removed the active item outline. Doing this makes it impossible to know what you're highlighting when navigating without a mouse. One mistake I'll not make again.

Overall, it was a fun learning experience and I’m pretty happy with the results!