4th revamp done

There are many activities and hobbies that fill my life—maybe too many.

I began discussing a website overhaul in September 2022, but it wasn’t completed until now.

The transformation was one of many things on my to-do list, far from the top. I’ve done parts of it here and there, and finally I’m happy enough with it now: a much smaller, faster web than ever before. Yes, there are still things I can improve, like serving images in various sizes, reintroducing some metrics (I’m not selling anything here, and the number of visitors would be just my dopamine pump), and so on. But none of it is needed; it would be just nice to have, one day.

I’ve created multiple websites in my life, starting in the last century with a fan page for The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall. So creating this site in 2007 wasn’t anything new to me. Why keep a personal website for 19 years, while I’ve killed almost everything else in the meantime? It’s my act of revolt against the enshittification of the internet, just like closing my Facebook page. In an era where platforms decay, algorithms manipulate, and corporate interests are more important than user experience, having my own corner of the web matters to me.

I started with my own CMS, written for my dad’s NGO (Charitativní o.s. zdravotně postižených). I was proud of it and improved it a lot through self-use.

In January 2013, I switched to CMS Made Simple, which let me use many things I didn’t have to develop myself. I’ve also started to aim (quite naively) for a full-time photography job.

The third generation launched in September 2015. When the CMSMS team faced challenges and development slowed, I switched to WordPress for its rich ecosystem. I removed most of the old visuals and aimed for a cleaner look.

In 2022, it was time to migrate to HUGO. It’s not a CMS; it’s just a static site generator. It’s simpler and more secure than anything I’ve used before, and I have everything I need. The only non-static part is comments; my wife sees them as critical and was pushing me to add them for months. In the end, I’ve used the solution described by Jeff Geerling - if it works for him, it should work for me. To my initial surprise, the entire web shrank to one-third its size and sped up a lot.

With the technical overview covered, let’s now focus on content.

During the last rework, in 2015, I was already planning to change direction and become more of a for events and places I’ve visited and an archive of LARP photographs (I started in 1999; the first pictures were published in Pevnost in 2001). The idea of being a full-time photographer was still there, but slowly dying.
At that point, I considered translating everything into English, but my language skills were not strong, and progress was slow. Even writing in my native language was a challenge, so neither goal was completed.

Over time, my need to attend every LARP lessened as other priorities took over, adding to the changes in the community, the pandemic. My focus just shifted.

After getting married, I decided to steer the site toward being ‘just a blog’. I may still shoot events, but I’m much more selective — as a new father, I have other duties.

There are still old articles that need to be republished. Some old galleries need descriptions. Even more content sits in backups and needs to be processed. But I’m working on it much faster than in 2015.

I’ve broadened the spectrum of things that I wrote about - a few posts related to Free and Open Source Software, a few about Paganism and being a Heathen, and a few short stories from the Dungeons & Dragons I’ve run for my wife.

So what now? I’ll write about whatever’s on my mind. Writing clarifies my thoughts, and this space lets me do that without worrying about algorithms or metrics. My topics will shift often — that’s fine. This isn’t a content strategy, just a space to think out loud and get feedback.