Website Overhaul

I thought long and hard about whether I should switch from Hugo to another static site generator. Not that I was unhappy with Hugo, I just felt like trying something new. In the end, I realized that I don't actually need a generator to convert Markdown to HTML. Basically, it would be enough to write the pages directly in HTML. Of course, a blog also has a few dynamic components:

• Tags
• RSS feed
• List of blog posts

I can do without the tags, but not the RSS feed and, of course, not the list of blog posts. However, since I already have the generated HTML as a base thanks to Hugo, it's actually very easy to continue writing directly in HTML.

While I'm busy working on the site, I might as well add some features or adjust the ones that have been bothering me:

Menu Bar

All pages, i.e., non-blog posts, are now accessible via a horizontal menu at the top. This makes it easier to find things like the RSS feed or my contact page when you are linked directly to a blog post.

Server Side Includes

One of the problems is that I don't want to change every page when I want to change the header or the horizontal menu below it, for example. I have now moved this code to a separate file, which is then embedded via SSI (Server Side Includes) during each request.

Dark Mode

After that, I did a little cleaning up, especially in the stylesheet. I also added a dark mode. When you visit this page for the first time, it should automatically display in dark or light mode, depending on the settings of your operating system/browser. However, you can change this manually in the menu bar at the top right. Unfortunately, I had to use some JavaScript code for this. I don't really like JS, but the end justifies the means.

A new Workflow

My new workflow for creating posts is now as follows:

• First, I copy the HTML file of an existing post, change the name, adjust the date, and write the text.
• Then I copy all the images for this post into the img folder.
• Finally, I adjust the index.html (home page) and index.xml (RSS feed) by copying and adjusting the lines of the last post.

Was it worth it?

I'm not sure yet. But it was fun, and I finally tidied up a bit. I also really like the dark mode. I hope the extra effort doesn't lead to me writing less out of laziness. We'll see...