Recently, I’ve been making some great progress with my personal website. While I normally don’t engage in technical ballets on the goings-on of this website, I feel it’s relevant to document what I’ve learnt and done, if only for posterity.

Tools

• Jekyll: as is often the case for me, this site is built using my favorite flat-file content management system
• Github: hosts the code for this website
• Netlify: serves the content to my website
• Obsidian: I write in a single Obsidian vault
• obsidian-git: helps me manage the version control of my Obsidian content
• Push git subdirectory as branch: a Github action that lets me publish a part of the content of my Obsidian vault to a separate repository
• Git submodule: my separate repository is pulled into my website’s code base
• Netlify build hook: every day, Netlify looks for new content and publishes it to my website

Why this is great

• I hold the strong belief that tools don’t matter. This means, among other things, that I don’t like to be limited to using particular platforms or apps to write. I want to see my files in a folder that I can move around. Jekyll allows me to do just this.
• My website is a text-heavy space: most of what you’ll find on here is written content. As a knowledge worker, writing is an integral part of my daily life. Many of the things I write are not for public consumption, but they are closely linked to things that are. To avoid duplicate content and awkward linking, it was important for me to manage my text files in a single space, one Obsidian vault.
• I have a tendency to tinker a lot on my website. This can make it so that I spend more time trying out new things and changing the design than I do writing. Having my code base and content separated helps me focus more on writing things that are meaningful to me.

Some things I haven’t figured out yet

• Is it worthwhile for me to publish more granular IndieWeb post types such as notes and likes? Do I care about them? Am I making them only to show them? What’s their value if I cannot automate this process? Does the technical implementation change if I push said content to a git repository that consists of only notes?
• What does a proper dark mode look like?
• Do I want to continue my barebones experiment and document the discomfort of vanity? Or am I ready for something more modern?
• How in the world do I even go about Micropub and Webmentions?