I've just given the website a bit of a design refresh. Its still a work in progress - a few things I want to do but haven't got round to, a few things that I've changed but still not quite happy with etc. But I know from past experience that if I wait until its 'finished' then I'll be spending months with an old website design I'm not happy with as well as a new website design I'm not happy with. This way... at least I have a new website design.

Since setting up my first website about 20 years ago as an experiment in learning/writing HTML, I've had quite a few different websites (experiments with Angelfire, Tumblr, Medium, Wordpress, Wordpress.com, Drupal, Joomla, a custom PHP/MySQL CMS, a custom Ruby on Rails CMS… probably some others that I've forgotten about) that have ranged from being "my space on the internet" to "side projects that ran their course" to "side projects that never really took off". Redesigning somerandomnerd.net prompted me to ask myself why I actually want a website in the first place.

Given that the answer in 2022 is very different to the answer in 2002, and will probably be very different again in another 5-10 years time, I thought I'd put it down for future reference.

I don't want to be worrying about a bunch of different websites on different domains/platforms. I want everything in one place - or at the very least, everything linked to one 'hub'.
I don't want my 'content' to be tied to a platform that I don't control. While that might be great for the 'promotional' side of things (eg. building up a base of "followers" or "subscribers"), it also means thinking about the platform and promotion instead of thinking about the actual content (ie. making video and putting it on the internet is different to running a YouTube channel, which is different to running a TikTok channel, which is different to running a Facebook page etc. etc.) Aside from the fact that platforms can fundamentally change at the whims of the owners, I just don't want to be thinking about the platform. For me, the whole point of putting my 'content' on the internet is simply making it available - not having an audience. I'd rather have a single appreciative email about something I wrote 4 years ago than see that I've had hundreds of views of something I made this week. (See: "This website is not data driven".)
I don't want to be worrying about things like updating software, installing patches and plugins, backups etc. I'm happy to pay a few pounds a month for a service that will take care of all that stuff for me. There was a time when I thought I wanted to understand what was involved in running a server and a content management service. I've learned enough to know that it isn't something I actually want to do/be responsible for. I've been using Squarespace for years now (initially as a temporary thing, prompted by a hack I didn't have the time to clean up after properly on an old website), and I've been pretty happy with it. (I'd be happier if I could use MarsEdit, and not a web-based form that sometimes loses my half-written posts, but I don't think I've seen an alternative that I can be bothered with migrating to.)

So, I don't think Squarespace is perfect, but its a good fit for the job - for now, at least. I can do pretty much everything I want to do with it, as well as a bunch of stuff that I'd like to do someday but probably won't get around to. (I do have some "proper" server stuff as well, that I occasionally use for development projects/experiments, and also for some email hosting - which, incidentally, is not something you should really do yourself because its far more hassle than its worth.)

So - hopefully its now a little bit easier to find what I've been posting recently. (And hopefully I'll be spending less time tinkering and more time writing now…) Hope you like it...

Some Random Nerd