@cstpimentel

Coding this website, what a pain in the A. (a rolling post)

May 23, 2021: I’ve always known I wanted site name: “thisweekend”

Mainly because I also want to use the contact email: wru@thisweekend But I cannot afford .com for now so we will settle with .fyi.

July 10, 2022: Where do I begin?

I asked our good friend chantal what framework/host she uses for her newly published website, and she said:

September 1, 2022: The need for something.

Decided to uninstall distractions, decided I want to have something to make use of my time while on sabbatical. Had a serious talk with my housemate bbd and we ended up reopening my Github account.

September 8, 2022: THE BEGINNING.

Got convinced by bbd to set up the entire site using Hugo pushed via Github so that I get to have more freedom in terms of layout and features.

At the time, he had just put up his blog showcasing different bottles of Spanish wine. And I trust his coding skills so I went down the rabbit hole.

  • First few problems included: where to host the images and videos?
  • But the biggest problem of all: what types of content must I put?
  • Last, I have not touched Github since my python classes which I didn’t really put into use a.k.a. no practice so how much time will I have to give?

I told myself: this is it, there is no turning back. Bought it via Google Domains after comparing prices with GoDaddy and enom.com time and again before deciding (ha! indecisive per ush), then I went to get me self an email address via Google Workspace, connect shiz and all at Cloudflare Dashboard–and finally, my favorite web tool to date: vscode.dev.

No one: Why web and not the software, Sheena? Sheena: Because, iPad.

Lol. I will get a proper Mac once I prove myself worthy of coding.

Now back to the URL picking.. What better way than to use the internet slang of Where Are You = WRU.

Lo and behold! [email protected] was born!

P.S. I couldn’t get ‘.com’ because it was expensive AF

September 9, 2022: Bbd was right.

Hugo is a lot of fun! When it was time to pick a template, I contemplated between Winston and Tufte and though I really loved the latter’s overall vibe, I had to pick the easier one to navigate (not to mention, I really wanted to use Ferrari’s Modena theme for Monza GP)

September 10: Winston was perfect.

Since it was quite easy to use, I finally felt the rush of wanting to code.

baseURL = "https://www.cstpimentel.com"
languageCode = "en-us"
title = "wru at this weekend?"
theme = "hugo-winston-theme"
themesDir = "themes"
paginate = 10

[module]
  [module.hugoVersion]
    extended = true
    min = "0.55.0"

[params]
  google_analytics_id = ""
  twitter_handle = "@cstpimentel"
  showAuthorOnHomepage = true
  showAuthorOnPosts = false
  showPostsOnHomepage = false
  addFrame = true
  addDot = true

highlightColor = '#FED136'

September 13, 2022: This will be a rolling/running post.

MF so now I have the platform, but my content is all jumbled up. Seems like this subpage Posts will cater to my ramblings. My coding game is pretty basic, and many thanks to bbd for all the help in setting up this site and constantly pushing me to finally do this. Now I need to include the capability to post using Telegram.

It’s also getting cooler in Barcelona, hoping to get to write some lines while at the playa or vermutanan lol

September 14, 2022: Shortcodes.

I learned a lot yesterday and spent more than 8 hours scrutinizing my code/content. I kept seeing issues and wanted to create pull requests right away. I smirk of the memory LOL

What’s still missing:

  • Left right, Back next
  • Should I include a HOME button?
  • I have an iOS Note shared with bbd with the website laundry list.
  • Do I need to add a comment box?
  • How do I finish the excel file for Trips? Lazy AF

One thing is certain: Hugo is good. Learn about Hugo Shortcodes here.

September 16, 2022: Meaningful commits.

I love that phrase. :) Also added a Spotify playlist in my About page (thanks BBD again for helping with the shortcode). I would very much want to include my movie ratings and maybe a bit of theater? But I could not find the proper widget for it yet! I also wish to make a gallery for the art/doodle part but “Build failed” cloudlfare said.

September 20, 2022: Gallery and Telegram

The latter I still do not have! But I do understand that I need to learn this API properly so I understand the terminologies when I read documentation. Bbd successfully found a way to create a Gallery.

September 21, 2022: The telegram integration

According to sensei, there are 3 things that we want to do here.

  1. Create a telegram bot from Bot Father. This will be what connects telegram to the the function that will create the content. To create a telegram bot, you can follow these steps. Make sure to store the API key somewhere safe.
  2. Create a script for github that will create our content (in this case the .md files) based on what we send from telegram
  3. Create the connection between telegram and github (in the form of an API).

To be truly honest, he lost me at AWS. There were also so many commands I had to run using a laptop, so we deduced this entire thing to revolve around: a laptop is better than an iPad–for the initial setup of these API integration at least.

Also today: I learned how to do italics lol

February 22, 2023: I changed the theme!

I was not that sold with the Hugo Winston template because of the frame. And I found a cleaner one called paper by nanxiaobei. Honestly, it took me a long time to figure out how to install it as I was getting failed deployments.

BBD saved me yet again. And I have learned how to properly use Visual Code now including hugo server combined with localhost:1313 I feel like a pro haha!

Learning how to code is a lot of fun, albeit sometimes frustrating. Indeed.

May 9, 2023 MF finally got Google Analytics to work! And a lot has happened in this site.

First of all, thank you zjeaton! - what a lifesaver! It’s been giving me anxiety how GA won’t seem to work! haha

There’s still the problem of the favicon not appearing in Safari or when sharing my link via iMessage.

I’ve added more trips and art posts that are just anything under the sun. So go check em out!

I have also fully captured tags in each post, so contemplating now if I should include a link for that.

And the biggest win so far: I have successfully integrated in my iCloud+ account the email address to rule them all: [email protected] :)

Now windowshopping for a ThinkPad X220 (because thinkstagrammers in Reddit keep flexing its tactile keyboard, and I agree). Also–the tank of a machine X230 that I own still frckn works! But I already gave it to my family so no wondering if I should get one for me self to bring to Spain. X230 (maybe mod with X220 keyboard?) i7, change the batteries, 16GB RAM and replace the HDD with SSD. Someone’s selling online for 8k php. We’ll see.

Till then, I will keep populating this site with posts about Trips. Toodles!

February 7, 2024 A LOT HAS HAPPENED Spent most of my time in Spain organizing my files on the cloud. I have so many photos and videos it’s quite astonishing really since I am not into photography or vlogging, I just genuinely adore creating stories to inspire others.

The latest update in this Hugo site would be transferring all of the photos to “cloudinary” so that the hi-res photos will load faster. Thanks to my developer housemate for doing this for me.

The other thing is that I have also found a system to make sequential file names using the Apple native app ‘Photos’ (during export) as well as concatenating (is there such a term?) lines of code using Numbers. It’s so easy to do mass posts now considering I still have PLENTY to cover if I intend to complete this blog. Until then! :)

Oh, and hello from sunny Valencia 🇪🇸!

February 29, 2024 BYE THISWEEKEND.FYI! HELLO @cstpimentel.com

Ditched the thisweekend.fyi domain name because I wasn’t all in on the fact that it wasn’t a .com. It also kinda made sense to just use the “cstpimentel” brand because what I publish here is basically just a blown-up version of my insta and twitter combined.

Some changes:

  • Domain host from Google Domains to Cloudlfare Domains (it was cheaper to buy here compared to Squarespace and GoDaddy)
  • Email address from [email protected] to [email protected]
  • Removed the subpage named ‘art’ since I moved my drawings to DeviantArt
  • Added the subpage ’tags’ for easy tracking, my content is more arranged now

If you just created your first website (Congrats!😊) but if you can’t get the iCloud+ Custom Domain email to work with your DNS record as per iCloud’s official guide, use Cloudflare’s guide instead. Worked for me!

to be continued

x, Cristymer Sheena