The Art of Breaking all the < things >

Building Translate Reality was, and is, an extremely exciting project. I will preface this with – I have no background in web development. Yet here I am. Writing about web development and the life-threatening perils I experienced in order to unleash this masterpiece to 4.4 billion users. The art of breaking a website is a real talent. A talent I have truly mastered.

Beginning the Art of Breaking

I used a hosting platform called Bluehost and installed Word Press. This is definitely the easiest way to create a website. Bluehost is a great hosting package that includes a domain name (so you don’t have to purchase separately and the configure it) and installation of Word Press is so simple. I highly recommend using Bluehost to create a website.

Anyone can use Word Press, correct? Yes. Anyone sane and reasonable. I wish that was me. Any success of this website is attributed to my highly intelligent friend, who spent time explaining hard words to me. Like ‘css’. And ‘Style=’.  Her name is B and that stands for badass, build-master and botch-fixer.

Botchtown. Population 1. Me.

Scroll Bar Breaking

The initial set up of the site took one night. Breaking it, fixing it and breaking other things was an Odyssey of destruction. I uploaded a theme and content to said theme. Said theme had a randomass scroll bar on the side of the page and that was completely unacceptable.  There was ALREADY a page scroll bar; as if readers want two separate ones. Ridiculous. I was able (with supervision) to locate the style code and I typed ‘disappear’ and ‘invisible’ and ‘disapparate’ but nothing worked. Then B suggested the word ‘hidden’. Ah! Hidden…just like my technical knowledge. It worked! The evil scroll bar goes away and, for some reason, that particular section did not morph itself into an aspect of the main page. I simply can’t scroll. What the shit?! You need a scroll bar to scroll?! F off.

Button Breaking

I didn’t like the button colours because I felt they were heinous. After determining this ‘theme’ was useless af, I started again. New theme. Basically it’s the best day ever because the new theme has no random scroll bars. I own you scroll bars!

The new buttons bother me as well and shockingly, I am successful at changing the colour. This is my biggest achievement in life. Upon releasing the site, the first issue found was weird button colours that appeared on pages I had actually never seen before. I am forced to sleep an entire night before I can fix the buttons and truly, it is a horrific evening.

Nine hours and four coffees later, all buttons match. I continue changing and breaking my website. My genius friend shows me the ‘history’ section where my old versions are. I stop crying. Life is ok again. I’ll just go back 17 versions.

Link Breaking

I begin to create links. No big deal right? Just highlight that mo’ fo’, put the link over it and it’s perfect. No. That is not at all what happened. First, I added the admin link and not the actual link. Nice looking link. WPadmin_TR@noideawhatimdoing.com.

Under supervision, I add correct links to words and I notice my links are black. Not bold, not blue; not anything except normal text. There is no way anyone is finding a single link. I can’t even find my own links. Every link is the weakest link. FML. Then I am taught that I need to style each link individually, otherwise it inherits the lack of link colour from the theme. I consider changing themes. Confusion ensues and I begin to ask myself why I am even blogging. I should have been a vlogger. Or a jogger.

The Art of Why I am Breaking the Things

I ask my friend B why I can’t just colour a picture of my ideal website and make the picture be on the computer?! Because I am not a computer engineer, she says…

Noted.

Back to the links. I am taught, using slow, small words, how to edit the style of my links and it’s kind of like this:

“Style:”Nadia=V.Cool;”

Success! I simply have to do this every single time I add a link. No problem! I love this theme and especially, I love messing with it. *flashback of scroll bar*

We’re live. Break it all!

At this stage of ‘development’, my blog is live. Actual human people are reading it. I’ve barely had time to edit my content because like…I want black buttons, blue links and why is sharing to social media so confusing.

I will continue to add new features to this site; I say ‘features’ because if you find something broken, it’s a feature. Did that on purpose; it’s an aspect of the art of breaking a website. I am now digging into the world of SEO’s, meta descriptions and other hard things, like making my images have cool borders. They call it ‘shading’.

Have you ever tried to build something before you learned how to build something? Tell me about it!

Style=”Intentionallyimperfect;”