Why I rebuilt my professional blog as a static site
I wanted a site I could understand end to end: fast pages, clean HTML, no database dependency, and a publishing workflow that stays out of the way.
I have built and rebuilt websites for a long time, and one thing has become clearer with every generation of tools: more machinery does not automatically make a better website.
I wanted the site to belong to the content again
This rebuild started with a simple requirement. I wanted to be able to publish an article without thinking about a database, a plugin stack or whether an update was about to change something I did not ask it to change.
The finished site is ordinary HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Posts are stored as content files, a small build script creates the indexes and metadata, and the deployed result can be copied straight to a web server.
The goal was not to make the site technically impressive. The goal was to make it dependable, fast and pleasant to work on.
Static does not mean manual
The repetitive parts are generated. The latest-post lists, topic pages, RSS feed and sitemap all come from the same post data. I still get the control of a hand-built site without updating the same link in six different places.
It also gives me room to write about anything
This is a professional site, but it is still my site. Software and web development will be common subjects, but they are not the boundary. If I test a product, build something useful, photograph something worth sharing or go down a technical rabbit hole, it can live here too.
That is the version of a personal website I miss: useful, specific, maintained by a person and not designed around feeding an algorithm.