How this site came together

This isn’t a big launch post. The site is still a work in progress, but the boring part already works: when I push to the main branch, Forgejo Actions builds it and ships it to Cloudflare Pages. Everything else I’m figuring out as I go.

Why build it at all

Mostly curiosity. I’d been wanting to try Astro, and I liked the idea of having a small corner of the internet that’s just mine. Building a website turned out to be a different kind of puzzle than my day job: part writing, part design, and part staring at a CSS rule that should work but doesn’t.

I started from Astro’s blog starter. It gave me the basic pages and a simple way to write posts in Markdown, so I could spend my time making the site feel like mine instead of building a big system before I had anything to say.

What goes here

Whatever I feel like on the day. Some posts will be tech stuff I figured out and want to remember. Others might be about a game, a ride I enjoyed, or just something I found interesting. No schedule, no theme, no pressure.

English only, for now

I’m keeping everything in English. One language means less friction, and less friction means I’m more likely to actually write. If there’s ever a good reason for translations, I can add them later.

Why the forest

The first version of the design was clean and plain. Nothing wrong with it, it just didn’t feel like me. What I wanted was the feeling of walking into an old forest in an adventure game: dark greens, quiet paths, a bit of mist and a few warm lights in the dark.

So that’s what it turned into. Readability still comes first, though. The atmosphere is supposed to sit behind the words, not get in their way.

Still under construction

There’s plenty left to do: polishing the design and, well, writing more posts. I’d rather let the site grow as I use it than pretend I have it all planned out.

That’s the first one. More will follow whenever there’s something worth writing down.

Update, Nov 7: the site now has its own domain, wisplight.net.