The last significant overhaul to this website was made around July, 2022. I was satisfied with the website, so hardly anything has changed since then. However, I wanted to add some features and prepare for more significant changes in the future.
I also wanted to take the opportunity to document what changed and archive older CSS files. I sadly didn’t do this for previous revamps, so the first iteration of this website has been lost. I can likely recreate the CSS for it though, so if I really want to archive it, retrieving the first iteration shouldn’t be impossible. It should make for a fun comparison.
Major changes
There were three major changes made, which I will lump together and call it “Version 2.5” of this website. Two are feature additions, one is an internal rework.
Review and Blog merger
The rework was merging the Reviews and Blog sections. This was done primarily because I post way less reviews and the separate Reviews tab felt like a waste of space. By merging them, it frees space at the top navigation bar. I now have room to fill it with a more significant page, such as a portfolio if I decide to upload one. It also makes organizing posts through alternative methods easier, such as sorting by publishing year.
Tags
Now that all articles are dumped into the Blog list, finding articles became tougher. To fix this, each article now has tags associated and are displayed at the top and bottom of each content page. This is a feature built into Hugo, the static site generator I use, but I didn’t use it until now. As I publish more stuff, being able to granularly organize content will become more important.
I will likely extend tags in the future to make them more useful. They certainly make finding articles of certain topics easier for now, but I think they can really shine with some customization.
RSS
A friend of mine asked about a subscription feature like an email sign-up a few times. I’m against email sign-up, as that is an overkill solution for a small site like this, and I would be unable to handle such a system as of now.
So the compromise I decided on is an RSS feed. On the home page, there is now an RSS feed that updates when a new article is posted. While old and as obscure as the knowledge that CDs existed, RSS should do the trick for anyone who wants to “subscribe”.
Writing style
Another major change, but unofficial one, is my writing style. I went over the older posts to add tags and noticed some trends.
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Newer articles are easier to read
Older articles have massive paragraphs, roughly double the paragraph length of recent articles. They were legitimately harder to read because the text density is so high.
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Older writing is cringier and more emotional
Somewhat self-explanatory, feeling cringe or embarrassment from older versions of yourself is natural. I think my older writing resembles a person casually speaking to an audience on stage, while over time it has become more objective.
Older posts had some sentences that felt awkward and forced in, which I don’t understand why I did that in retrospect. Maybe it’s the countless technical school reports influencing this, or me trying to write in a more neutral tone.
Future changes
Unique profile
I’m planning to make this website reflect me more, like a profile. I was against this for a while without solid reason, but if I’m going to have a website and the domain isn’t my name, I should try to make it stand out. I finally uploaded a picture of myself, so the next step would be a better description or even a portfolio or something unique.
There are lots of independent websites run by individuals (mostly programmers or people involved with software/tech) that have portfolios or technical articles. They look nice. While I’m not knowledgeable to their extent, I should try to put something unique here.
JavaScript
I may also experiment with simple JavaScript if I ever find some good use for it. JS is a great skill to have, and it’s wasteful to just learn pure HTML/CSS without any JS. It’ll be a bit hard to get JS to fit here, since this website is only filled with static blog pages. I think best way to fit it in is on a more dynamic website, which means a new domain or subdomain with a completely different focus.
UI
I’m not certain how long the format of the website will stay constant. By format, I mean the structure of navigation bar, image, header, captions, table of contents, and then the article. I think it’s well structured and looks ok; but if I want to change it, rearranging things will make it ugly. Maybe a colour palette change may come someday.
All of this may come with the v3.0 release for an undetermined release date. There are still objective I will follow, such as bandwidth optimization and minimalism, but some changes are beneficial. I’ll likely make a follow up post when that happens.