The Grand Redesign

Nine years ago I launched this blog to share some thoughts about software development. Most of the time I have been very strict about content that I posted. If it wasn’t tech, I didn’t post it.

Over the years my priorities shifted. I even started a new blog to open up a new niche. But in the end I decided to not restrict myself in terms of topics. Let’s see where this leads me to.

How it started

Back in February 2017, that’s nine freaking years ago, I launched this blog. I just picked some template and some static site generator to get started. The blog was built using Gatsby with some simple theme.

The problem with Gatsby

With the years I was increasingly frustrated with Gatsby. I wanted a simple blog, nothing too crazy client side stuff. But essentially that was the focus of Gatsby: web workers and lots of JavaScript.

When I left day to day web development, I also switched to Hugo. After all the hassle this was a breeze! I picked a new theme that was simple, but less basic and had a touch of color.

Essentially I was pretty happy with my site. But as teased above not with the topics I was writing about. I started a new website Aroid Garden about houseplants, but also lost focus there due to personal reasons. Eventually I sunsetted it.

Why the redesign?

Now I decided to transform my former tech blog to a personal one. If I want to write something down, I don’t want to think about wether the topic fits or not. Writing is a habit that must be built and maintained, but I regularly focus on other stuff than tech.

Though the markdown-style design just doesn’t fit the new content I want to share. That’s why I decided to go with the redesign. As it’s been a great choice I sticked to Hugo, but couldn’t find a theme that fit my needs, so I rolled my own. For technical details about this site see Colophon, which will be updated in the future.

I know there are still some rough edges around the design, but better ship, than procrastinate.

What about the content?

When mixing many topics, it makes sense to provide ways to navigate and filter it more easily.

• refactored the tags that grew over the years (I had go and golang)
• separate RSS feeds for the blog, library and one for all content

I also provide additional content like:

• a book library to share book recommendatations
• a now page to share what I’m currently doing
• the colophon to share technical details about the site
• my list of projects
• and sovereignity to share my efforts to regain control over my data and online presence

Also some updated content:

• the about page was just outdated
• I imported the Aroid Garden posts to the plants tag, though the layout isn’t optimized for it

In the end, when you have a look at Home, you cannot come around to see that my content has changed. And that this is just the beginning.

• Announcement
• Web