I made my first website when I was in high school.

It was my birthday. August 23, 2021. I remember sitting at my desk, staring at a blank text editor, fingers hovering over the keyboard. I had been learning HTML and CSS for a few weeks, watching YouTube tutorials late into the night, copying code I didn't fully understand, breaking things, fixing them, breaking them again.

And on that day, I decided to build something. Not a tutorial project. Not someone else's design. My own website.

Looking back at it now, it's rough around the edges. The layout could be better. The JavaScript is basic. Some of the styling choices make me cringe a little. But none of that matters because it represents something more important than clean code or pixel-perfect design.

It represents the moment I stopped being someone who wanted to learn web development and became someone who actually builds things.

The Journey Begins

I started with simple HTML pages, basic structure, headings, paragraphs, links. Then I added CSS, experimenting with colors, fonts, layouts. I remember the first time I got a hover effect to work. It was just a simple color change on a button, but I felt like I had discovered magic.

JavaScript came next. Event listeners, DOM manipulation, simple interactions. Each small victory built my confidence. Each bug taught me something new about debugging and problem-solving.

What I Learned

That first website taught me more than any tutorial ever could. It taught me that perfect is the enemy of done. That shipping something imperfect is better than endlessly polishing something no one will see. That the best way to learn is by building, failing, and building again.

I deployed it on Netlify. I shared the link with friends. Some of them probably thought it was kind of basic, but I didn't care. I had built something and put it out into the world.

The Technologies

The stack was simple: HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript. No frameworks. No build tools. Just the fundamentals. Looking back, I'm glad I started this way. It gave me a solid foundation to understand what's happening under the hood of all the modern tools I use today.

Still Standing

The website is still live at iamovi-firstweb.netlify.app. I've thought about taking it down or replacing it with something more polished, but I keep it up as a reminder. A reminder of where I started. A reminder that everyone begins somewhere.

If you're reading this and you're just starting your own journey, here's what I want you to know: your first project won't be perfect. It doesn't need to be. Just build something. Ship it. Learn from it. Then build something else.

That's how it works. That's how we all learn.

The code is open source on GitHub. Feel free to look through it, laugh at my mistakes, and remember that we all start somewhere.