Website Revamp 2026

It’s that time again! I have revamped the website, and in this short post, I’ll go over the changes I’ve made and why.

Why?

The old website was fine, and there really was not much reason to revamping it yet again. However, a few things happened that made me want to change it. Primarily, I was experiencing some low self-esteem and had found myself in a bit of a hole of negative thinking about my skills and ability - revamping the website would prove to myself I could still do things. However, I wouldn’t be revamping it just for the sake of it, I also wanted to improve the back-end code to be more efficient and comply better with various internet standards, better comply with various accessibility aspects, and I wanted to change the layout.

What?

Cleaning up code was cumbersome and time consuming, as was trying to wrap my head around proper syntax use and standards by both Google and those in IndieWeb, but it’s made me feel better about the website as a whole. I tried to reduce unique code to certain pages as much as I could, trying to be as Markdown as possible without inserting HTML or making dedicated CSS classes, but found alternatives to be poor and made the website worse. As such, pages like the Button Wall and Old Graphics survive. Some other changes that crossover between back-end and front-end are the headers, which now all correctly flow from H1 to H2 to H3 and H4 without jumps (also part of improving accessibility). I’ve added <!--more--> to each post signifying the preamble text and is used as excerpts for the front page. As such, the front page now lists more information about the five most recent posts, as well as everything being paginated, so the visitor can now browse through the post extracts.

I’ve also changed the overall layout in other ways, with posts having a column of metadata and the Table of Contents to the side, which turn into the ingredients list when viewing a recipe page. All pages show a modified header with the theme selector, as well as links to Mastodon and the RSS feed up there too. There has been a change from the more boxed-in appearance to the new full width header, and also more space for the post content, which now runs all the way to the bottom of the page. Overall, I also just wanted a lot more breathing room and “white space”, to make the content feel a lot less cramped.

I decided to remove both WebMentions and Mermaid Diagrams. For WebMentions, it wasn’t getting used and I’d come to be happy with this being just a place I write about things I want to without external validation. For the diagrams, it had always bothered me that I was unable to have these change (at least, I could never work it out!) the theme of these dependent on the site’s wider theme - it was always stuck in dark mode. A such, I’ve accepted to go without, and instead try to be better at explaining things in text without the use of diagrams.

Speaking of themes, although I do love the colours in Rosé Pine Dawn, I became sort of enamoured by the Solarized Light theme and the idea of going back to a more vintage or retro time in technology, though I have modified the colours to be more accessibility friendly. This was many months ago as I write this, so I can’t quite remember why I was so convinced I had to use such colours and imagery, but I was inspired somehow and decided to go for an approach of bold colours, yellow undertones instead of pure white, large text, and blocky lines or dots. For dark mode, I was not too keen on using the related Solarized colours here, and instead reverted back to Catppuccin I’d used in the past, as although I prefer the light mode of Rosé Pine’s Dawn to Catppuccin’s Latte, I like the dark mode of Catppuccin’s Frappé more than Rosé Pine’s Moon. Plus, I quite like how the two different themes, the light theme of Solarized and the dark of Catppuccins Frappé, have two different “feels” to them as well, with the light mode being more retro, with the dark being more modern.

As a result of my new “vibes”, I have removed the use of emojis throughout the website design as I felt they did not fit the new vision of the website, but have introduced more CSS generated graphics alongside the CSS generated patterns used in the header as well as for the background. I’ve also the font from Atkinson Hyperlegible to Lexcia Ultralegible, as I liked the changes the newer font made.

I’ve also made more subtle changes, utilising the “outset” and “inset” border styles across the website. Inset is used for both inline and blocks of code, whereas outset can be found for words used in lists that are bunched together, such as tags on a post or attributes like my Finch Nova’s favourite food! I also use outset as the border of my images with captions, as seen with my plants in Kinder World, and for the “cards” in my Music Reviews post.

Lastly, I changed a lot of lists into tables, such as with my About Me page and the Rooms page, as I felt these optimised the space better. I also added more description to the Rooms page, better explaining what each section was about.

When?

One of the main reasons I have not written much over the past year was that I actually started this in mid-2025, and it not only became a preoccupation, but also meant new posts would be written with the new website in mind, but would appear on the old website. I did publish the occasional post, deciding it was worth the hassle of having it in two different /content/ folders at the same time, but a lot of work was being done in private, with the website looking neglected, when that couldn’t be further from the truth - though I do admit illnesses slowed down progress, but it was always on my mind!

A website is never really “done” though, and worryingly I asked for various old books on website design, usability. accessibility and style over Christmas I have yet to dive into, and I’d be surprised if I don’t end up inspired to revamp the website again with these new ideas in my mind. For now though, I am glad I (finally!) completed this project of mine, finishing what I set out to do all those many months ago last year!