Make Own Site

There is finally time to make a personal site

The first decision is not about fonts, frameworks, or hosting

The first decision is to keep the data in a form that is easy to maintain

What Should Be Stored

The repository should contain:

• articles as Markdown files
• evergreen pages such as About, Now, Uses, and Projects
• shared site metadata
• small HTML templates
• maybe generated public files, if deployment requires them

What Should Be Avoided

The site should not start with a heavy application stack

If the page is mostly text, a static document is enough

Good constraints for the first version:

• no client-side JavaScript by default
• readable HTML output
• one small CSS file
• RSS or Atom feed
• pages that work in text browsers

Result

The site can grow slowly

A static source model makes it possible to change the generator later without rewriting the content