I decided to make a new personal website. The last time I did this kind of thing was before the pandemic, and I did it with WordPress before, so my first instinct was to try WordPress again. But WordPress seems to have changed a lot since then. Or maybe I just forgot how annoying it is? Anyway, I found an interesting-looking theme to start with, but building on it is really frustrating.

Style changes don’t apply throughout the site when it seems like they should. I can’t change the font in the footer even though there’s a place where you can supposedly do that (you can select a new font but it changes nothing). I can’t move design elements around smoothly in the block editor, and I can’t seem to get out of the block editor either (although maybe that’s just a theme issue?). I’d like to make the background different on different parts of the same page, but I can’t figure out how to do that.

Am I going about this the wrong way? Do I need a different theme? A plugin? Should I use something other than WordPress? I’m annoyed with all of the AI stuff WordPress is pushing at me anyway. Do I just need to bite the bullet and teach myself CSS or whatever, given that I don’t want to vibe-code this site? Advice please!

edit: also, if there’s a better Lemmy community for this kind of question, please point me there!

  • AlphaOmega@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    16 hours ago

    Drop the bloated CMS. Build CSS and HTML only by hand, easy peasy. Learn flex box or grid CSS

    • butWhatIfiCan@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      2·
      13 hours ago

      honestly, looking up flex box makes me think that learning CSS might be less frustrating than dealing with this crappy WordPress interface… I think I could learn this https://www.w3schools.com/csS/css3_flexbox.asp

      But I’d have to somehow host my site, though, right? I’ve never had to do that before, I just let WordPress handle that. I don’t think I’m ready to set up my own server… I have zero experience with anything like that and also only have one working computer right now. (My other, older laptop needs more expensive/extensive repair work than I thought.) Is there a hosting service you’d recommend? Or am I back to needing a “bloated CMS” that offers hosting?