Webdesign

The plan to create a website that offers assistance in the identification of gastrotriches and systematically summarizes my own observations and findings is already several years old. When I started working on this, I - like probably most amateurs - gained my experience with WordPress^©️.

WordPress^©️ is a wonderful content management system, that is very easy to use - as long as you follow the guidelines and procedures that WP provides. Unfortunately, I had different ideas for my website than WP’s developers and very soon I found that I was spending more work on bending WP and customizing the design than I was on incorporating content. Each new species web page had to be incorporated into appropriate navigation menus, each change to the structure of the site entailed extensive changes to WP listings. Additionally, I found it difficult to maintain a consistent web design for the individual pages, as the design was a direct part of the content of the web pages. If a decision was made at a later date to display the individual art pages differently, all existing pages had to be adjusted. At some point I had to admit to myself that WP was not suitable for my way of working and I would either have to change my workflow or give up the advantages of WP.

By chance I came across the website generator “HUGO”, which allows to generate static websites locally, which are then copied to a simple webserver only at the “push of a button” - no complicated database system, no design defaults, no proprietary plugins like with WP. And the best thing about it: HUGO tries very successfully to strictly separate content and design!

In HUGO you choose a “theme” as initial design and customize it once to your needs. The individual pages are then created in a simple text editor in “Markdown” format and generated according to my design specifications and integrated into the website. It is possible to maintain data fields in the text files, the contents of which are then included in the presentation of the website. For example, it is possible to fill out a simple, freely definable “data form” for each species of gastrotrichs, in which general size information and descriptions of the species are entered. This information is then used by HUGO to generate the corresponding web page with a standard design, e.g. for a “species profile”. Data and design are completely separated from each other. All web pages use a consistent design, which can be changed at any time for all web pages at the same time - without having to adjust all individual pages! Add to that the advantages of using static web pages, which offer unmatched responsiveness at minimal cost with full control over data privacy.

For me, using HUGO has greatly facilitated the creation and maintenance of my website and I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the many volunteer developers who have created and continually maintain HUGO ❤️ !