Site Redesign Now Live

If all goes well, this post should now be up and running on the new coefficiencies. The site now runs as a ‘static site’ meaning it’s just a bunch of HTML pages, rather than relying on a server to build pages on the fly based on requests.

The static HTML pages are built by “Hugo,” a static site generator, that lets me write in Markdown and then builds HTML pages for them when I’m ready to publish. Previously, the site was hosted on Wordpress.com, a hosted Content Management System / publishing platform.

The new site has a couple of advantages:

1. It’s fast. There’s very little javascript, trackers, etc, on each page, and they’re just sending a pre-built page, not building them then sending.
2. It’s cheap. Because it’s essentially a bunch of small HTML files, you can host a site like this very cheaply in various places, and free on GitHub pages. (I’m very lucky to have a friend who is letting me host there.)
3. I have a ton of control over how I want the site to work.
4. I think it looks nicer and a little more bespoke than many of the other hosting platforms.

When I spun the site up on WordPress, I struggled a ton with getting a theme I liked and modifying it in the way that I liked using WordPress’s GUI. And I hit a breaking point with WordPress when it wouldn’t let me embed a javascript form from a ticketing site onto my university alumni reunion site. I have to admit, I struggled quite a bit with Hugo — and I wouldn’t recommend it for the non-technically inclined. But it was very satisfying to have the ability to tinker with the site using text files and actually get it looking how I wanted it to.

There are still a few things to do, like setting up a newsletter for subscribers (and a link to subscribe) and maybe a contact page or something. But I wanted to first make sure I had a way to easily write a post from my phone and get it onto the site without a lot of fuss. If you’re reading this on the site, I guess it worked!

More writing to come this year, I hope. Stay tuned!