New Website!

Whoa ho ho ho. I’ve made a new website!

It took winter break in my third year of medical school to give me time to do something creative. As I’m sitting in my apartment living room, with my brother playing Maple Story on my desk and sister playing Indie games on her phone, I can finally take a break from clerkships and studying to code and flesh out a website– a product, a brand, a soon-to-be-resident, an artist, a writer: to be or not to be?

To possibly be useful for people, I’m going to be transparent about website design and the process of getting a host. Here are my steps from starting a website from scratch:

1. You need a host. A host is a company who physically owns the servers and the stuff that stores the files of your website. When someone visits your website, they must access your files stored at your host’s servers. For me, I am using DreamHost.com because they are professional, yet quirky. Plus they had a good sale going on during Black Friday for a year of hosting for $49.45. It came with unlimited bandwith and unlimited disk storage.
2. You need to register a domain name. You need a website domain name. This is can usually be done by the same company that hosts you. DreamHost registered my name (www.henrydelrosario.com) for $9.95 a year.
3. You need a content managing system (CMS). A content managing system is a program that you install on your website that allows you to create a website without you needing to know how to program or code. It allows you to easily enter content (like a post) and then automatically generate website pages. Examples include, WordPress, Wiki, and Moodle. I chose WordPress because it is most suitable for creating a portfolio and resume. Fortunately, DreamHost has one-click installs that allow me to install WordPress automatically. If this is not possible, it is still easy to install to your website (ask google).

That’s really all you need to create a website. This process can take less than a day if you are tech savvy enough to try new things and flexible to google many tutorials when you hit a speed bump. WordPress is a beautiful system that can give you a chance to ignore code altogether or to have complete customization. For me, I installed the Pinboard theme and I am customizing it’s code personally.

I will quickly mention plugins, such as NextGen Gallery, which can be downloaded through the WordPress installed on your site. Quality plugins are an easy way to sophisticate your website as long as you are selective and poetic about it. Thanks for reading!