Building a small site on purpose

The first version of this site was not a brand exercise. It was a way of getting out of my own way.

I have a tendency to make the system around a thing more interesting than the thing itself. Site structure, tools, components, the possibility of a better setup. All of that can be useful, but it can also become another way to avoid putting anything into the world.

So I wanted a site that was small enough to understand and easy enough to change.

A small system

The content lives in the repository. The frontend is built with Astro and ships as static files. Keystatic gives me an editor, but it does not become the owner of the content. GitHub is the source of truth and Cloudflare publishes what is there.

None of those choices are especially exotic. That is part of the appeal. There are fewer moving parts to explain, fewer services to keep alive, and fewer places for a small change to disappear into.

The useful test is simple: can I come back to this in six months and understand how it works?

Enough structure

I do not want every page to be a blank canvas. That sounds flexible, but it usually means making the same decisions again and again.

The site uses a small set of reusable blocks instead. A hero, a project grid, a writing list, a quote, a callout, a gallery, a useful next step. They give a page some shape without making every page look the same.

That feels close to how I like to work. Start with a few good constraints, then spend the energy on the part that matters. The structure should support the thinking, not compete with it.

Showing the edges

The visual system is deliberately direct. Large type, hard borders, square panels, a dark background, and one sharp colour. It is not trying to look frictionless.

I like interfaces that show what they are made of. A visible rule can help a page feel organised. A box can make a decision feel deliberate. The acid green is there to interrupt things, not decorate them.

The style is a reminder that a website is an interface, not a moodboard. It has a job to do.

Publishing is a decision

One slightly inconvenient thing about this setup is also one of the better things about it: saving an edit is not the same as publishing it.

The change has to be reviewed, committed, and pushed. That adds a small pause between making something and putting it in front of other people.

I do not think that pause is a bad thing. It makes publishing explicit. It also makes the history of the site visible, which is useful when the site itself is part of the work.

Still becoming

This is not a finished statement. It is a working archive.

Some things here will be polished. Some will be brief. Some will probably be wrong in ways that are useful to notice later. I would rather leave room for that than wait until the site can present a completely settled version of me.

If this works, the site will become a place for projects, notes, experiments, and the questions underneath them. Not a catalogue of everything I have done. More like a record of what I am paying attention to.

That seems like a good enough reason to start.