You are reading this on my shiny new website. I decided that WordPress, while awesome for big sites, is overkill for such a small place. What pushed me over the edge was my recent realisation that WordPress updates my site more frequently than I do. Plus, when I look at my server logs I see thousands of spammy requests from botnets probing WordPress for weaknesses. One day they will find one, and my server, along with all the cool stuff I keep on here, might get wrecked. This new incarnation is super simple, super fast, secure, and doesn't load any external content that might track your browser.
The site exists as merely a bunch of HTML files with whatever images and style files each page needs provided next to each page - like the good old days of the early web. That said, I am not directly writing each page in HTML - that's one thing I don't miss from the early web. Instead I am using Pelican - a static site generator - which takes reStructuredText, grabs my theme files and parses them into HTML. Simple! I've spent some time over the past few days converting the few dozen posts from my old site into reStructuredText format, rewording some content, deleting some stuff I no longer wanted, and generally tidying up.
You may have noticed two things:
- The theme is completely different. I made it myself, using the new-fangled CSS Grid feature in modern browsers. If the layout doesn't seem to be working, update your browser you luddite! I also got rid of a lot of the useless bumf that plagues most websites, including my old one. I have gone for the minimalist approach, so almost everything you can see has a function and is not (just) for aesthetics. Since I've not properly played with HTML and CSS since I was 14, I expect some things might be broken here and there, so expect some slight tweaks as I squash bugs.
- You can no longer comment directly on posts. This is on the surface a limitation of Pelican, though there are plugins available to integrate comments with third party providers. But, I hate the idea of a third party owning comments on my website and serving arbitrary HTML to my site (and you!), so I won't install any of these. In any case, not many people commented on the old site, and I want to try an experiment anyway: the contact page has instructions for emailing me, so I wonder if anyone will...
Given the above points, please get in touch if you find something isn't working or you don't like the way something looks or works. I promise I won't be offended.
Finally, I hope everyone reading this site finds at least something worthwhile. I don't post very often, but when I do it's usually something I consider worth writing down. Whether that's something you consider worth writing down, remains to be seen!