Building one’s own website is far more simple than one might expect. It’s also far more complicated.

Programming a website is simple. If you make a mistake with H.T.M.L. or C.S.S., they’ll fail softly: your website will look slightly wrong, but it will still load with no problem. Because I generate much of my HTML with a custom Python script I threw together, adjustments to my design easily propagate across my website.

On the flip side, perfecting the design of a website takes far more effort than you might expect. Every letter has to be carefully weighed, each ornament fully considered. Because my Python script recreates my entire website every time it runs, my design has to be thought out enough to work with content I have not yet created.

When I created this website, I thought the design would be a small weekend project. Instead, I’ve spent copious amounts of time researching independent website design in order to perfect this site. Resources like 32-Bit Cafe and James’ Coffee Blog have been invaluable in inspiring me to improve by blog. Developing a design which is accessible, modern, and distinctive is a serious task.

Each detail potentially impacts its fellows. Every change in layout makes some things look better and others worse. Although I originally used a Google Font to power this website’s typography, I ended up eliminating it in order to increase load times and protect user privacy. Now, pages load instantaneously, but they look slightly different on different computing platforms. It’s a small trade-off, but it’s probably for the best.

In addition to the visual improvements, there are many invisible changes also going on underneath the surface. Over the past few weeks, I’ve added appropriate meta tags to my pages; created an R.S.S. feed, and added structured data. All of these changes were implemented with no visible change to the user experience. Visually, I’ve made some adjustments as well. In addition to fixing some HTML bugs from my initial website design session, I added support for dark mode at the request of one of my readers.

But designing a blog isn’t only about the programming that goes into it. After all, there’s little point to having a blog if you don’t ever write anything. That’s where things get really interesting.

After several weeks of putting out a single long article each week, I decided to try something new this week; I put out smaller posts about once a day. Although I originally intended to link to individual articles elsewhere on the Internet, in the classic style of a link blog, my format seems to have evolved into a series of mini-essays. I’m not entirely sure how these short articles will continue to develop (or if they will at all), but I’ve surprised myself with how much more I’ve written in this space.

Not only have I been posting more, but I now have actual, real-life, people who – get this – read my blog. If you’ve been following my blog for the past month, you know that I didn’t create this blog in order to syndicate my ideas across the Internet; I created it so that I would have an emotional and creative outlet. Although my readership is minuscule compared to the number of people on the web, knowing that even a handful of people care enough to read my blog and write me feedback means the world to me.

I could not be more pleased with the direction I have taken over the past month. With visual and under-the-hood improvements, with an increased cadence of publication, and with a small number of regular readers, I have surpassed my expectations for this place. In embarking on this experiment, I have discovered that writing about the news isn’t just cathartic; it strengthens my analyses and makes me a more capable thinker.

There are plenty of additional tasks for me to take on, of course. I want my website to have a slightly more distinctive personality, for example. I’m also concerned that the front page (which I’ve been calling “The Feed“) is not accessible enough. These are goals I plan to take on in my free time over the next few weeks; in just over a week, I have a break from classes and will be able to commit more time to both research and my various projects.

Nevertheless, this first month of writing and managing a blog has been a delight. Talking about what I’m writing about has been an exciting new experience, and I’ve been developing a wonderful habit of writing out my thoughts. I’ve become more reflective, and, I suspect, a better communicator. Thank you for the warm support and thoughts you all send my way.