About this website

It's been quite some time since I left (almost) all social media, which wasn't a conscious move rather I just got tired of what social media is now. I prefer it this way without endless feeds and not having that much of a control over what content is being shown to me.

A couple of years ago even when I used social media extensively I created my first website to share my writing; I didn't want my writing to be a subject of algorithms. I started with Ghost, which was easy to set up, and it worked fine. However, I just didn't like the "corporate feel" of it. Maybe, not necessarily Ghost's problem, but I didn't vibe with that. At that point, I also needed to create my portfolio, so I moved to Webflow and built my second website on there. Two weeks later, and I wanted to move over to somewhere else. It was then that I discovered Neocities. So, after sailing through many many personal websites I decided to code my own (especially because I hated Webflow's no-code editor).

To do so I chose Astro framework (it gives more control and customizability than Neocities). The problem was that I knew almost nothing about front-end development, so I went through many guides and tutorials and, I hope, I managed to build a cohesive website.

I started with this guide. I also found PetraPixel's tutorials very helpful.

After many hours of troubleshooting and trying to make everything work, it came to me that it'd be nice to have a media log, gardening notes, and other interests of mine on my website. The problem was that it's not that convenient to post little notes every so often because it requires opening a code editor, pushing updates to my git repo, etc. I wanted something simple while staying away from traditional social media. I've compared some services and chose Micro.blog. So, now I have this website, my main webpage, and a Micro.blog website for microblogging, and I'm very content with this setup.

Software and services I use

• Zed: a code editor. I prefer it better than VS Code
• Astro: a web framework. This website is build with Astro
  • Detailed Astro guide to get you started
• Micro.blog: a microblogging platform that supports Webmentions and Micropub, is part of the Fediverse

Other cool stuff

• BearBlog: a very minimalistic blogging platform. I've considered using it but in the end went with Micro.blog
• Meadow has some cool tools
• PetraPixel's has many HTML & CSS tutorials and a layout generator

Webrings