This process is simple and works for me. As I get older, and more experienced, the more I resent having to learn new technologies. The more I resent having to deal with bloated, broken software tools that I’m constantly forgetting how to use, that fail in weird ways, that spit out error messages that I don’t understand. For my personal projects, the less software that exists between me and what I’m trying to do, the better. That means that less can go wrong. And in the world of software, something is always going wrong.

So when it came time to write a static website, first for my portfolio, then for my blog, I resolved to keep it as low tech as possible. These are the rules I set for myself, that guarantees a smooth, easy, fast development process.

1. No folders. Without folders, I don’t have to remember what each of the folders & sub-folders in a directory are for, and where I put certain files.
2. Non-asset code must be either .html or .css files. Nothing compiled, or generated, no scripts, no installation required, no build files, no makefiles. I simply open an html file in a browser to view it, and in a text editor to edit it.
3. Only one css file: style.css. This makes it easy to remember which file has the styling - there’s only one option anyways.
4. Deploy with github pages. GitHub Pages is easy to deploy and works natively with GitHub. Deployments happen automatically when I push code to the repo.
5. Monitor with cloudflare analytics. This was a super easy setup that’s free and only required a snippet of code added to each html file.
6. The only javascript on the site is the cloudflare analytics snippet. No snazzy js features, no .js files.

This guarantees that I know exactly how to make changes to the site when I want to. The simplicity to the development process has been a breath of fresh air in a world of bloated, broken software.