I’ve been working with my brother on his photography website for a few years and it’s changed a lot over time.
My first iteration was to take all the photos he sent me and make a basic website that displays them, using static html and css.
The next thing I tried was to store them in Firebase and then sort of dynamically pull in the images and import them into the same structure.
Then I learned about react.js and decided that I could try that out and build up his site. That was a pretty interesting experience and I learned a lot.
Unfortunately all of that took a lot of time and required me to basically build a CMS on my own. While I could probably do that, I realized over time that I didn’t want to and furthermore couldn’t devote the time to give him what he wanted. So I made the tough, 😂, decision to make him a SquareSpace website.
I’ve been listening to ads for them in podcasts for years and finally decided it was worth it. Why should I keep him from updating his stuff because I wasn’t feeling the dev process. For the last 4 weekends, I’ve helped him work on the site and I have to say that it’s a great experience.
It’s still the early stages, but I’m glad I had this journey. I learned a lot of web stuff that has made me a better developer and I’ve also learned when to be pragmatic. I’m glad I can help him get his stuff out there and I can still provide technical assistance.