Practical Intro to Web Development with Static Site Generators
This workshop aims to teach the basics of web development in a practical setting – in SUTD, we're going to help you make cool landing pages for your Fifth Row!
What is a landing page and why do I need it?
A landing page is a simple, static home page that tells visitors brief information about your organisation. It lets visitors know you exist, and encourages them to contact you for future information. It's great to increase the visibility of your organisation to potential members and sponsors!
What will you teach?
This workshop will be divided into two parts, basic and advanced. If you are looking to make a simple page for your organisation, you should attend all the basic classes. The basic classes consists of the first three sessions and we aim to make all participants publish their sites to the web by the end of basic class, so at least you can go home with something.
The advanced class, consisting of the last two sessions, is for attendees who wish to do more advanced stuff, such as including interactivity into your webpages using JavaScript, and is recommended for those looking to kickstart their web dev journey.
Detailed curriculum overview:
- Lesson 1: Basic HTML and CSS
- Lesson 2: Static Site Generators with Jekyll
- Lesson 3: Publishing your site to GitHub pages, and collaborating with friends
- Lesson 4: (Advanced) Introduction to Javascript for interactive pages
- Lesson 5: (Advanced) Fun Extras: Blogging with Jekyll, Google Analytics...
What will you not teach?
Just to clear any mismatch of expectations, we are not:
- A web design class. We cannot advise you if you decide to put yellow text on white background with font size 4.
- A full stack development class. We are making static pages. It's called static exactly because there is no backend.
- An outsourcing firm that will build your website for you from scratch (yes we were actually asked this before 😡)
Who can join this workshop?
While this workshop is geared towards students who have a practical need for landing pages (i.e. those who run fifth rows), all SUTD students and staff are welcome.
Do I have to pay for the website we'll make? Who owns the website?
This workshop is completely free. Because we are using GitHub pages, web hosting is free. As for domain name registration, we will give everyone a free subdomain under the opensutd.org
domain, and comes with free SSL (HTTPS). Whatever you make in this workshop belongs to you, but if you decide to use the opensutd.org domain, we gently request that you put a referral link to us somewhere in your website. 😉
Do I need to have prior experience in coding?
Prior experience, while useful, is not required. We will conduct the workshop assuming that everyone has not written a single line of code beforehand.
However, we do expect you to follow the setup instructions before coming to the workshop (details will be sent out to registrants before the workshop). If you don't come prepared with the software on hand, you'll end up wasting your time.
I'm representing my fifth row to make a fifth row page. What do I need?
The original purpose of this workshop is to help fifth rows to make their own pages, and we're dedicated to seeing this happen. To make the best of this opportunity, we suggest thinking of the following beforehand:
- What information about my fifth row do I want to put on the website? (photos, key dates and times, blog posts?)
- What is the main goal I'm trying to achieve for my fifth row through a website?
Interested?
Check the event calendar for the dates, then register here!