I will just admit it outright: I have neglected my own website for years.
It used to be a template I pulled from W3Schools. Then I decided to learn how to use Jekyll and made my own website, complete with my own HTML and CSS. Then I kept it looking plain for years.
Now I am finally revamping this website after realizing that minimalism should not mean a bland website.
Backstory
When I was a kid, I had a certain frustration when it came to websites: Too much unnecessary content, takes too long to load. I had a slow internet connection and an even slower computer back then, which further compounded my frustration when it came to websites. To make things worse, some had advertisements plastered all over the website, which I did not care for and just wasted even more of my time.
It’s a good thing we have browser extensions and apps that can block advertisements.
Because of this frustration, I tried to make my website as minimal as possible. The idea was rather than have flashy content and a bunch of moving stuff that wasted everyone’s time, I would have a website that would be plain, simple, and above all, readable. That way, it would be easy to make and maintain for the next few years.
Back then, I did not know of any tools that would make such an idea easy to do. As I stated earlier, this website used to be a W3Schools template. To make a new page, I just made a copy of an HTML file and then modified that copy, so it got to the point where I just didn’t want to do it anymore. Worse, whenever I made those copies, I then had to edit some of the existing pages so it would link to that new page. It was a hassle that I hated dealing with.
Moving to Jekyll
In 2021, I found out about Jekyll. I decided to try it out as part of my effort to get rid of the W3Schools template and make a new website from scratch. For a time, I actually preferred doing this, because it meant I could figure out what I really wanted my website to look like. It made adding new pages and modifying existing pages a lot easier, and it even made adding style to them a lot easier. However, because I insisted on keeping my website minimal, I did not apply much styling to it, but I did make sure to add some content I thought was meaningful or important. Sadly, I just did not update it as much as I probably should have,especially since Jekyll allows for making blogs.
I’m still using Jekyll right now. I don’t know if any other software that works with GitHub Pages right now, and I haven’t looked a lot into how extensible Jekyll is. In fact, the way I found out about Jekyll was from my need to add a device to the LineageOS Wiki, which was (and still is) powered by Jekyll. So at least I could get rid of the template and see if I can still make websites using HTML and CSS, and clearly, I was able to. It’s just that I didn’t put a lot of effort when I adopted Jekyll.
What’s happening now
I’m still going to keep working on my website, but I am going to start adding some more styling, along with some other stuff. Even though I prefer it to be minimal, I don’t want it to look bland and unorganized. There are plenty of websites out there that have a minimal look but don’t look like zero effort was put into them. Plus, I’ve been working on new projects that more-or-less resolve some frustrations I have, like not being able to control the fans in my laptop. Those will appear on my website sometime in the future, so look forward to see more stuff on my projects page.
I should be finished with the new website by the end of June of this year, although there is the possibility that I keep working on it until then.