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|
+++
date = 2023-01-03
title = "Recent Website Changes"
description = "A retrospective of recent changes to my website."
+++
## 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.
|
