SUsusam·Sep 17, 2022
I began developing personal websites in 2001. It all began with <FONT SIZE="7" COLOR="RED">Hello!</FONT>. It was a time when people like me would develop personal websites just because we could. It didn't matter whether we had something useful to say or if anyone visited the website. All that mattered was that it was fun! I still maintain my personal website in the same spirit.
I do share the technical posts from my websites on HN and Reddit hoping to get some feedback but that's not the primary motive. Also, there were no HN and Reddit in 2001. Back then I used to write for myself and I still do so now. My personal website is a way for me to keep an archive of some fun things I know so that my future self can look back at them when needed or desired. Only a few days ago, I added a jokes page[1] to my website just because I thought it wou
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ld be nice to keep my favourite jokes somewhere easily accessible.
As years go by, I've found that the friction of editing and publishing new posts or pages to my website has only become less. First came virtual private servers that swayed me away from shared web hosting services. Good riddance because the shared web hosts often had terrible security. Then came Git which made it incredibly efficient and convenient to keep a change history of my website and sync it to any system.
I write my pages in plain HTML using Emacs. Then git add; git commit; make pub[2] and the updated website is published within seconds. A Common Lisp program reads all my HTML pages, adds a common theme and template to them and writes them out to a directory Nginx can read from. It is as low friction as it can get while maintaining complete control on the design and code of the website.
It has been 13 years since I wrote the first line of HTML and I am still having fun!
[1] https://susam.net/maze/jokes.html
[2] https://github.com/susam/susam.net/blob/main/Makefile#L144