Published: Aug 23, 2026 by Althea Valara
My degree is in math and computer science (I double-majored!), but that was +coughs+ years ago, back when the web was still new. I’m a decent programmer and have long known the basics of HTML, plus I’ve very good at doing web searches for “How do I do $X in $Y language?”.
A few years back, I was trying to learn newer programming langauges in the hopes of transitioning back into the computer science world for work. There’s a website called Learn Enough whose slogan is “Learn enough of a language to be dangerous.” I used their Ruby on Rails tutorial briefly back when it was free, and then started the tutorials again once they went paid. I didn’t finish, but I indeed learn enough to be dangerous.
The courses for basic HTML and CSS taught you to use a static site generator named Jekyll. Folks, I am very glad I had that experience while learning, because it meant a lot less headache when building this site. From the start, I used Jekyll to build the structure of the site. Jekyll allowed me to pull out the repetitive pieces - the headers, the navigation, the footers, etc - and only code those once. Then Jekyll magic would stitch all the pieces together into a full site.
Something went wrong when I was first building the site, though. Jekyll should’ve defaulted to using the Minima theme, but it didn’t. What I got was very bare HTML with no CSS. Well, okay! I could roll my own CSS, building it to my needs!
Problem is, I am not great at CSS by any means. I can do basic stuff, but advanced stuff–like making responsive pages for mobile devices–is beyond my current capabilities.
It’s always bothered me that the site doesn’t work gracefully on mobile. I’ve tried various hacks to fix that, including using viewports, but I just don’t know enough CSS to get it working. So I decided to rebuild the site from scratch, this time using one of the available Jekyll themes. Not only would this allow for a more polished-looking site, but it’d transform gracefully on smaller devices without much headache.
I tried a few different themes, but the first two I tried gave me fits with applying them to my site. I finally settled on using the Bulma Clean Theme. It’s not without issues - some of the CSS throws warnings when I build the site - but the majority of it WORKS. Still, it took a month an a half to complete changing my pages over to the new theme.
There were some changes that had to be made, or were made to make the site better:
-
When I first built the site, I had “Jump to a section” links on longer pages. Eventually I removed those and put sections in accordions. Well, accordions don’t work nicely with this new template, so those are gone now, too. In their place is a hideable, sticky table of contents for the longer pages.
-
I double-spaced dialogue on the FFXI pages to make them easier to read.
-
I keep flip-flopping on FFXIV’s Shadowbringers Recaps. First I had them on separate pages. Then I had them in accordions. I considered going back to separate pages, but it would make navigation a bit more difficult to do. So now it’s back to one page with a Table of Contents. This makes the page extremely long, though!
-
I added links to my socials in the footer of every page. This includes a link to my other personal website, Althea Valara Games! where you’ll find ALL my fandom projects, including fanfic, fan crafts, and my Twitch channel.
-
Since I am not a pro at CSS, the only way I could figure out how to get the button to toggle the Table of Contents on pages that have it to “stick” to the top of the page was by putting it in the site navigation. It works! But I’m open to opinions on the useability of this.
There are still some small bugs to fix, but most of the site should be working! I’d love to hear your thoughts on the redesign. You can send me an email or ping me on Bluesky or Mastodon(https://mstdn.games/@AltheaValara).
Now that the site overhaul is done, I’m hoping to get back to the documentation! First goals are to finish Lasswell’s short story in the FFBE section and the San d’Oria Missions in FFXI.
Thank you for visiting! I’m incredibly touched at the number of visitors I’ve had so far, and I hope you continue to find this site useful.