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- <title>53hornet ➙ How to Make Your Website Boring and Why!</title>
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-
- <article>
- <h1>How to Make Your Website Boring and Why!</h1>
-
- <p class="description">
- I took the time last year to make my website more boring. Here's how you
- can do the same and why you'd want to.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Up until recently I was using a static site generator
- <a>(cobalt-rs)</a> and a fancy CSS framework/library <a>(Bulma)</a> to
- build my website. I also had one or two scripts to do various fiddly
- things in the browser. I took the time to gut it and now I have a much
- more boring website. I don't use anything but HTML to write all of the
- posts and pages. This eliminated the need for a static generator or
- script to turn something like Markdown into HTML for me. I also scrapped
- all of the customized CSS framework style sheets that I had been using
- for a very small (145 lines including whitespace and braces) single-file
- stylesheet. I also dropped all of the fancy links, banners, most of the
- icons, and any JavaScript that I had originally. Now, my site is much
- more boring. And it's so much better.
- </p>
-
- <h2>How does one make their website boring?</h2>
-
- <p>
- Typically, ask yourself whether you need something. If the answer is
- "no", you can safely remove it and you won't need it again. Your website
- will become more boring (read: simpler). Here are some of the things I
- evaluated:
- </p>
-
- <ul>
- <li>
- How many 3rd-party assets, templates, CSS libraries am I using? How
- big are they? Are they slowing down rendering or annoying to
- maintain/upgrade?
- </li>
- <li>Do I need a Sass interpreter to "build" my styles?</li>
- <li>
- Am I using a static site generator? Does it make my life easier or
- more difficult?
- </li>
- <li>
- Am I using a bunch of JavaScript? What does it do and does it really
- need to do it to make my site work better?
- </li>
- </ul>
-
- <p>
- Do you use a lot of third-party assets, templates, or CSS for your site?
- Do you have to run a SASS tool to generate your stylesheets? Are your
- stylesheets really big (> 1000 lines I think anyone would consider on
- the bigger side)? Consider whether or not you really need them.
- Oftentimes, with CSS, less is more. Especially if your site is just a
- collection of pages of text with links to other pages of text. You can
- make your site attractive and compatible with 100% of browsers by
- keeping things simple. And then you don't have to worry about rebuilding
- your output stylesheets or keeping up with libraries and frameworks.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Do you have a lot of dynamically-generated content on your site? Does
- the document need to change based on user input? Do you have a large
- number of script tags importing minified files from third-party CDNs?
- Odds are you don't need those either and you can completely get rid of
- them. Now you don't have to worry about making sure all browsers can run
- those scripts, or whether or not the CDNs are online, or you're
- requesting the latest version.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Do you use a static site generator to build your site? Is your content
- complicated enough to write that you can't write it in plain HTML? Is
- Markdown really easier or more powerful? Odds are, it's easier to write
- directly in HTML without having to tell your generator what to do with
- your tags. And for the oddball tag that Markdown doesn't directly
- support, you might often end up writing HTML into your Markdown files
- anyways. And, you can better control what the output formatting looks
- like, making your site's code more readable. Furthermore, you won't have
- two acting copies of your site, a pre- and post-generator one. For me,
- it was annoying having "source code" for my web site that was different
- from what I was actually hosting. It's so much nicer to have a 1:1
- mapping between what I write, test, and deploy.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Still not convinced? Still need to automate some part of building your
- site, like generating an RSS feed? Is there any chance you can write a
- quick Makefile to do that for you? I was able to do just that, and it
- was way nicer not having to install and learn how a generator worked to
- automate assembling my site.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- If you answered "no" to any of the above "do you need"-s, you just found
- a way to make your site more boring. Boring equates with simplicity.
- Simplicity is a good thing.
- </p>
-
- <h2>Why should you make your website <s>boring</s> simple?</h2>
-
- <p>
- Not relying on a bunch of libraries and assets is a good thing. It
- seemed like every time I wanted to add a quick post, I would notice
- there was an update for some library I was using and I was spending time
- upgrading and learning about it. You know, that thing that computer
- programmers enjoy doing and are good at but often doesn't actually help
- them accomplish anything: fiddling with shiny new stuff that doesn't
- solve a problem. Now I get to just focus on adding things to my site and
- I'm never worried about whether it looks broken.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- I also didn't like having a pre- and post-build site. If I wanted to fix
- one typo I couldn't remote into my live site, fix it, and then leave it
- there. I had to do something like fix the typo in my Markdown, commit
- and push it, and then re-run the generator and upload the new "live"
- files. The generator step wasn't making things easier, it was making
- them more annoying.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- You'd also be surprised at how easy it is to make your site fast and
- reliable on all modern and old browsers when it's boring (read: simple,
- again). Internet Explorer doesn't care about my site, it's a breeze to
- render and there's nothing in it that hasn't been in existence for at
- least a decade. (Alright, I do have a few SVG icons which it probably
- wouldn't know what to do with. You can't tell the difference between
- Firefox's and Chrome's renders of my site. And Google's PageSpeed
- Insights score is a hilarious 99.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- My site is also more functional now. It's less distracting. It's really
- easy to navigate and read. There's no runtime, no JavaScript that has to
- execute before the reader sees the page they're looking for. And there's
- practically nothing to maintain except my posts. It's also really easy
- for crawlers to quickly ingest all of my posts and turn them into search
- results. Hopefully, it's also easier for the visually impaired to zoom
- in and not mess up the document, or use a screen reader that extracts
- the article tags.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- The benefits are through the roof. My site used to be about tinkering
- with tools and libraries and frameworks. Now it's just a boring website.
- That leaves me with time to focus on tinkering with other stuff that's
- more interesting, and only focus on writing when I'm working on this
- site. So make your life easier and go make your website boring today.
- </p>
- </article>
- </body>
-</html>