How many times can I use the word “refresh” in the title before it becomes too cumbersome? Well, I think we’re just about alright with 3.

That time has come around again, as it inevitably does, once in a blue moon…. the website (refresh) rebirth.

Years of Neglect

This website has looked this way since early 2011, but back then it was a full-blown Wordpress site. The grand plan was to write some stuff of varying flavours here. Over three years I wrote nine posts, which is an output I’m pretty happy with. Problem is, after 2013 it would appear I stopped.

In 2018, probably in an effort to save money on pointlessly hosting a Wordpress site, I decided to mothball it and exported a standalone, static HTML version. I chucked that in an Amazon S3 bucket, pointed my domain to it and left it to rot.

So, why the refresh now?

At the start of 2025, we were looking to hire a new employee at the company I work for. Before interviewing potential candidates, I did some snooping. One person hadn’t listed a website anywhere, but they were using a custom domain for their email address. I checked that domain, and it turned out to belong to their own consulting company.

It was old, tired and clearly unloved. It had no SSL certificate and was advertising some long-dead product or service. For someone applying for a senior developer position, it gave me the wrong impression. Before I’d even spoken to the person, their neglected website had given me a negative outlook on them.

Yeah. I know what you’re thinking. I was thinking it too. My thoughts immediately turned to my forgotten website, which had no SSL certificate and no obvious signs of life happening there for almost a decade. I was guilty of those very same things I was berating that person for.

At that point, I decided that during 2025 I would breathe some life into my poor forgotten website!

What’s changed?

As it basically looks the same!

When I switched to the standalone HTML site, I had actually wanted to use a static site generator, but for various reasons I don’t recall, that didn’t happen. If I’m going to add anything to this website going forward, the content editing needs to be something more than editing flat HTML files, but not as involved as a Wordpress site. I decided to go with the static site generator Hugo.

Wordpress always felt quite restrictive. One of the major things I like about Hugo is the ability to easily have different layouts, down to individual posts or pages. For me, that really opens up a bunch of creative possibilities that I’m excited to explore going forward.

Given I started the process at the back end of February and now December is almost gone, I’ve been working very slowly. Based on my git log I can see that I pretty much worked in three concentrated chunks: March, the beginning of November, and a few days in the run up to Christmas. Implementing Hugo has been quite straight-forward, and any problems I had were easily solved.

There are a few minor tweaks visually to aid readability. I bumped up the font size and increased the contrast of links and introduced a new highlight colour. Otherwise, for something I designed almost fifteen years ago, I still really like it. Perhaps one might class the design as timeless, because to me it still feels fresh and modern. (and please, don’t tell me otherwise!)

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, I have the SSL certificate set up. Not having that all these years is the thing I’m most embarrassed about.

And so

I’m excited for what comes next on this site. A few things here and there each year and I’ll be happy.