So, you want to know how it all started, huh?

Like I said, I started off not knowing a damn thing about HTML and CSS. I figured I'd just start and learn as I go - it's not that difficult, right?

Looking back at it now, yeah, it isn't that difficult, Keyword now. Back then, it was very difficult.

I used Sadgirl's layout generator, and at first it was a breeze. I just changed colors and backgrounds, added images and some text, that part was easy-peezy (most of the time). But, as I began wanting something more, something unique, to change more things, I hit a wall. I found I couldn't do even something as basic as moving a div to the left. I was frustrated and wanted to quit. So I... Gave up. Yeah! Took an indefinite break.

I wasn't gone for long though. Soon enough, I began missing coding and the world of personal websites. I still browsed them from time to time, and was slowly building up inspiration and ideas. Eventually, I knew I wanted to get back into it. Most of all, I missed the feeling of looking upon a page I had made and smiling and thinking "I made this! It's mine!"

So, having learned from my mistakes, I found a beginner's HTML and CSS tutorial that I had saved a while back. I liked it a lot! It was easy to learn, the guy explained and showed things very well. I find that my previous failed attempts helped me learn better. Because HTML was no longer this crazy unexplored land; it was something I had dipped my toes in, even if a little bit, I saw these tags and I understood their basics and I knew what I wanted to do, it was just time to learn how to do it.

It was real easy and fun, messing around with my page and adding fun things to it. I really recommend that tutorial if you're new, but if you don't like it - keep searching! There are so many out there, you'll definitely find the one for you.

The new layout started with an idea to assign every link on the navigation panel a cute icon. I was full of tiny ideas like this, but I didn't have an actual website to put those ideas into. I struggled thinking of a creative layout, scrapping many ideas, until I realized: I need to think of what to put there first, and how to put it second. I ended up going with a pretty simple 3-column layout, but it worked, because I knew what I was going to put in there. I had all navigation on the left sidebar and fun stuff on the right.

To get that layout to work though, I had to learn CSS Grid. Once again, I tried to kind of learn it as I went, which didn't turn out successful. So I found a video that helped me understand. I made many mistakes before I fully understood how it worked.

Once I figured out the lauout, I got to decorating! For a long time though, the homepage remained empty. I just didn't know what to put on there. To get inspiration, I got into a habit of visiting other websites and seeing what they put on their pages, or the way their pages are laid out, and I wrote it down or sketched it. It helps me see the barebones skeleton of a website, without being distracted by pretty fonts and graphics. And so I finally had a homepage!

I still wasn't happy though. It had a lot of problems. While making that version of my website, I started to get concerned about accessibility. Some of those issues, I felt, weren't possible to address with the current look; I needed a complete redesign. Another problem was that I felt like... My website lacked identity. It was just "Franny's Website", I didn't have anything interesting to put on the homepage except for some updates and fun images. I knew things needed to change.

I took another indefinite break. This time it was different: I wasn't giving up, I knew it was just a temporary break. I thought long and hard about things. What did I like about making websites? What was my purpose of doing it? What did I want my website to be? What did I want on it?

At some point, I wondered: how was it so fun before? Why is it so stressful now? I didn't have an answer. But I decided something. I decided to not care about it. Stop asking questions and just go do it.

At this point, I already knew that the thing that keeps me going the best is exploring other people's websites. I made a bookmark folder with sites that I liked the most, and thought about which traits I wanted on my website, and which I didn't. One thing that stood out to me was... Names.

Yeah, I briefly mentioned it on here, but I was really unhappy with my website name. It felt basic. Uninspired. I mean, that's what it was: Franny's Website, Website that belongs to Franny, Website that Franny made. And that's fine! If your site has a similar name, that's literally fine. It wasn't for me, because that was always only meant to be a placeholder.

I knew I wanted a new name. I felt like it was just around the corner as I gathered keywords that related to the themes I liked or wanted my site to portray. It had words like "dream", "cozy", "nook", "stars", "rainbows", you know, all the stuff you always see on my websites. Just the kind of stuff I like.

I got it accidentally, but it was the biggest Eureka! moment for me.

My name was Daydream Station.

Daydream Station! That's such a cool name! It invokes so many feelings in me. It's magical but also fantastical, it's cozy, but not trapping. It can be anything, really. My first two associations were a train station and a space station. And while I was leaning more towards space, both at that point and now, both of those images are still vivid in my mind.

With finally a theme in mind, it was also easy to write a fun intro to the website - basically the same one you can see on the homepage, save for a few alterations. Things were shaping up to be fantastic.

And then I began filling up the pages! I began with an about page, the same one that you can see here. But there was now a problem: the page looked far more intricate than the homepage. And that only reassured me that it was a major issue I hadn't thought of.

I didn't know how the fuck to decorate the homepage.

Like, I made my own image border (as you can see here), I had pretty fonts and spans and stuff, but there wasn't really space for images and stuff? So, looking at the new about page for inspiration, I began thinking of a new layout...

And so we arrive here! This is the current layout. You may have noticed that each "chapter" is styled differently. They are styled as the versions of my website I worked on at the time. Some of them were never published.

Now, what's interesting about the current layout is that... I didn't think about it that much. Crazy, right, resident thinker doesn't think. Awesome. But I knew a couple of things: 1. is that I wanted each page to look differently. I no longer wanted to be "trapped" in whatever main-content-area div I made. I wanted each page to be its own thing, to let it breathe. 2. is that I wanted the homepage to be a central hub of sorts. So, instead of going into a room and then into another room from that room like a maze, I wanted the homepage to be sort of like a big hall, from which you can enter any of the rooms, look at it, then come back.

So I... Kind of randomly sketched a few rectangles on paper (I always do this with layouts), I just. Made it. Then I tinkered with it. And I was a happy person.

The end!