+++
date = 2023-01-03
title = "Recent Website Changes"
description = "A quick review on this website's recent changes."
+++

## The State of This Website

Over the years, this website has changed URLs, styles, content focus, and much
more. However, it seems that I am never done, as I am yet again changing this
page to fit my current needs and wants.

While this site was already minimal (~12kb), it contained a lot of disorganized
content and some poorly chosen color schemes.

The recent updates attempt to fix these items while focusing on what I truly
care about here: the content within each page.

## Recent Changes

I've made quite a few changes to the style of this website today, both in the
CSS and in the HTML.

Here are some of the key takeaways from today's changes:

1. Reduce the width of the website from `60em` to `40em`.
2. Remove breadcrumb navigation and replaced with a simple "Return Home" link
when visiting anything other than the homepage.
3. Remove syntax highlighting from code blocks. CSS now loads from a single
file.
4. Move blog posts on the homepage to the top, pushing tertiary content down.
5. Update font-family from `monospace` to `sans-serif` for readability.

## Future Focus

### Accessibility

My main focus amidst all the changes this past year was accessibility.
I tried to improve the accessibility of all pages on this site as well as I 
know how.
For example, I added aria labels to identify different navigation menus in 
November.

I want to continue this in 2023 and learn more about the accessibility features
I can utilize to help those who may need them.

### Content First

Beyond accessibility, I am making a concerted effort to bring the content of
this site to the forefront and push the tertiary information (e.g., About Me,
Services, etc.) down below the content.

Further, I want to review and edit previous blog posts for grammar, accuracy,
dead links, and more. Where necessary, I may even add a blurb at the top of old
posts that are no longer accurate or helpful.

### Style

As always, I will be searching for ways to reduce distractions and bring a
minimalistic approach to this site. While there are certainly more drastic
measures I could take, such as making this a [Shinobi
Website](https://shinobi.bt.ht) or a [No CSS Website](https://nocss.club), I
prefer to keep some modern features here.

Two ideas have been floating around in my head, but I am not sure how I feel
about these approaches yet:

1. Going all-in with Emacs org-mode and creating a script to auto-publish all my
blog posts from org-mode to plain HTML files and then letting my CSS style it
after the fact.
2. Focus on publishing for Gemini or Gopher and then utilize a conversion
program to translate the pages to HTML.

## Looking Back

As I sit here and finalize the changes, as well as this post, I am happy with
the current state of this website. It's certainly a long way from my first
attempts (parallax background images, anyone?) and it's good to see the
progress.

I can only hope and work hard to ensure that I make more meaningful progress by
this time next year.