So turns out, there are a LOT of great sources of inspiration on how to go about setting up some cornerstone pages out there.
I’ve spent most of the day happily falling down the IndieWeb rabbit hole once again. There were points where I completely forgot what I was even supposed to be doing, instead just enjoying all the awesome websites people have set up and call home. It’s honestly reassuring to see this much excellent effort being put into something as simple as a homepage.
And all the different colors! And fonts! And just unique approaches to how a website can look and be built. Some are simple templates, and still beautiful. Others are complex hand-rolled elaborate displays of CSS mastery, and just as equally awesome.
Clearly, I have my work cut out for me.
I know that I won’t get there overnight. I’m only trying to start right now. But man, there is some great stuff out there that I’d love to be able to do myself.
By far, the best starting point I found was via (of course) another personal website, ken.fyi. Specifically, this piece about building cornerstones, and the various options that are most commonly found across the web.
I mean, just go read that page. It’s so inspiring! So many great links to follow and examples to see and ways to make an afternoon completely disappear before your very eyes.
Reading the list of popular cornerstone pages out there, and following the links to all the great examples, I kept in the back of my head the constant question: which ones should I use? What should I build? And the voice that resides in the back of my head kept shouting back, “all of them, obviously! And stop storing your questions in my living room!”
And while all of them are great ideas (a Quotes page?!? Are you kidding me with how awesome that sounds and how much fun that would be to put together???), I think I’ve limited my starting options down to three.
I’m thinking I’ll start with an About page, because that seems to be a thing worth having. And it’s the page I find myself visiting most frequently on other people’s homepages.
Next I’ll put together a Contact page. I hesitate here, because I generally cringe at the idea of other people contacting me out of the blue. But that’s partially the whole point of this, isn’t it? Putting oneself out there and engaging with the world. So yeah, there’ll be a Contact page.
Lastly, I really like the Now pages I’ve been seeing. So I think I’ll try and throw one of those together as well. Seems like a great way of sharing things that are worth your time. Or a good way to explain why you have no free time. Or just to mark the passage of time. Whatever it does, I like the ones I’ve seen so I’m going to try it out.
And that is the goal for the next couple of days! Once I get the hang of it and have worked out how I want things to look, I’m sure there will be further expansion. But this is where I’ll start. Tomorrow.