Nice tutorial, I just disagree on two small points.<p>First, there are very sound arguments for not using CSS preprocessors [1].<p>Second, for a website that you own, using ".htaccess" is discouraged for performances reasons. The Apache 2.4 docs [2] say:<p><i>"You should avoid using .htaccess files completely if you have access to httpd main server config file. Using .htaccess files slows down your Apache http server. Any directive that you can include in a .htaccess file is better set in a Directory block, as it will have the same effect with better performance."</i><p>[1] <a href="http://blog.millermedeiros.com/the-problem-with-css-pre-processors/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.millermedeiros.com/the-problem-with-css-pre-proc...</a>
[2] <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/howto/htaccess.html" rel="nofollow">http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/howto/htaccess.html</a>
I was about to link this to a friend, who has been using Wordpress and expressed interest in learning more about how websites work, and then OP got into installing a local Apache server and using LESS to compile CSS, and I'm afraid it might intimidate her, since she's already hesitant about her capacity for learning this sort of thing. I'm not sure why either was brought up though. If OP is comfortable with these tools and wanted to write about his own experience, I could understand, but for the sake of a tutorial, what benefit does adding these complications, which present a risk of alienating some segment of the tutorial's audience, provide? Unless you need a back end language, you don't need to install a local Apache server; you can run html files directly from whatever folder they're stored in, and if you link with relative paths, you can transfer the whole directory to a live server and it will still work fine, and for the amount of rules a beginner will probably write for a small, personal website, using LESS is probably overkill. Furthermore, anyone who's comfortable with either of these practices would have no problem adapting them to a basic "building a website with a grid framework" tutorial, and everyone else can pick them up later, when their value becomes more apparent.<p>It reminds me a little of the way every Javascript tutorial I find lately seems to assume that you're running a Node.js server. Outside of maybe the HN crowd, are most people running Node servers? I doubt it. And it's almost never necessary; you don't need Node to configure routing or build some custom directives in Angular, for example, so why insist that people use it?
I've rarely seen such an off topic introductory image, but I'm more surprised to see that kind of very beginner info land on HN front page. Nicely written and everything, but... HN?
Having written pages, by hand, for ages now (like 15 years or so), I recently took this to a new level. I'm now hosting my site on my own hand coded webserver and no other server in front (please don't make me explain).
The title made me think this was gonna be minimalistic, something like <html><head><title>My Great Website</title></head><body><h1>Hello world!</h1><p>Find ye great content yonder.</p></body></html> so I was surprised to see it using LESS and delving into .htaccess
I came to the same conclusion as the author recently, which spurred me to write a simple, no frills lightweight CMS. For those interested you can see it at <a href="https://github.com/mox1/webpy-bootstrap-blog" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mox1/webpy-bootstrap-blog</a><p>Personally, I think there's a middle ground somewhere between writing everything yourself and using hosted Wordpress. I want to control the HTML / CSS of the pages on my site, but I don't want to end up in a WYSIWYG environment where all the details are hidden.
Good for you - keep learning! Knowing how things are built from scratch will give you a level of understanding that will help in all sorts of situations.<p>However, I am at the opposite end of the spectrum. I have never used a template or boilerplate or anything. Every time I've tried to use a prefab site I end up spending hours tearing it apart and feel like I am going backwards.<p>That being said, I cannot really recommend my approach - find a happy middle, and your productivity will soar.
I did something similar few months. I've been developing webapps using django for a while now. But my frontend skills (html/css) had always been very rusty. I decided to improve it by building a personal website without using any frontend framework or doing any server side development.<p>It was an interesting exercise. The output is here - <a href="http://archisman.com/" rel="nofollow">http://archisman.com/</a>
Just like to add that if you're using FileZilla as your FTP client, make sure to not let it save your passwords, as FileZilla stores them in plaintext on the computer.<p><a href="https://forum.filezilla-project.org/viewtopic.php?t=30765" rel="nofollow">https://forum.filezilla-project.org/viewtopic.php?t=30765</a>