Migration

For some time I was experimenting with concept like this website. I was experimenting on doing something along these lines at Original Experimentation Site.

But recently I wanted to finally fully try it so I made this website you are currently on. I migrated stuff from old site though most of them are in gemtext only because I didn't felt like it needed to be in html. Note that If you are reading this from https website you still can see this gemtext through http though you have to know url of it. I could possibly do something for that. But that's maybe for future me if I will see need for it.

Anyway, So what is this website for?

Well, I want to make some more random notes and posts and want to put it here. Where it will be available both through HTTPS and Gemini. This time is thanks to source hut pages.

Original experimentation site was using agate. Which worked fine but there were few things that I wanted better solution for:

• Agate is Gemini only and I wanted both gemini and normal web using http[s]
• I was using rsync to the server which worked fine but was definitively more in the way because every time I had to launch a script to sync it

So I made this site. I first tried it using Hugo though docs of it were so bad for me that I went with building SSG(Static Site Generator) myself.

So This site is run using:

• Source Hut Pages as hosting which supports both HTTPS and Gemini
• Source Hut Builds as Continuous Delivery system that builds this site and pushes it using hut cli
• Source Hut hosted git repository which has code of my SSG + my site
• My own small SSG written in PHP (I tested it on PHP 8.4 if someone would be interested)

This site is hosted now on my domain at:

• HTTPS Version
• Gemini Version

For those interested below is more details on what I wanted and how things work.

HTTPS Site

I wanted HTTPS part of the site to look very similar to Lagrange representation of my Gemini part of the site.

On HTTPS part of the site I wanted also not to use any JS which for now I still use but maybe at some point I will add some way of highlighting code in markdown in PHP written SSG itself so I don't need prism.js on frontend.

PHP SSG

I written my own SSG. This SSG is pretty basic, It has way of handling assets (which in case of this website is mostly fonts, css and prism.js file), It has way of handling markdown as content input, It has way of using PHP in the content, It has a way of using layout templates, It has a way of generating index files (like gemlog, feeds etc). It's definitively more basic than Hugo and stuff like that but I feel is much more flexible at the same time because It's just basic PHP that will be run on build and make few output files.

If you are interested in this SSG for whatever reason, You can ask for it here:

• My Source Hut Public Inbox - Email
• My Source Hut Public Inbox - Website

Anyway, Using this SSG I now can just write or PHP template of the file or markdown post or gemtext post and it will do its small amount of magic and we have a site.

Why I wanted to make this site the way it is ?

I wanted to have place for more random and less polished things, notes and other stuff. I have a blog (that I use rarely because I always try to make posts there as perfect at they can be).

Though I wanted place for more imperfect stuff so here is this site.

Rough edges

Note that this site is still work in progress and probably will be for some time to some degree. For example I will probably do some stuff so sitemap is better, so rss/atom feeds are better etc. But I feel like this site is good enough now that it should be fine if I will take the rest a bit slower.

Ending thoughts

Anyway, Thanks for reading and have fun reading more stuff on my website if you will want. If no just have fun further exploring the web, traveller.