About Personal Websites

I have long been a fan of having an own personal space on the internet where I can share my thoughts, write about stuff I like and present my works.

This is now my 13th iteration of my website, since 2024 on romanzipp.com, and the first one in Go! I have created many tools over the years that live under multiple URLs, like MotoGP calendars, IAB-Checker and so on which made shifting the tech stack immensely complicated. With the help of Claude, it still took a lot of time but made the process a lot faster. I can now report, no PHP-FPM process is being spun up when visiting any sub-page.

Over the Years

I now wanna share the iterations, my personal website went through over the years. I have learned a lot, adapted to styles and switched through frontend technologies. Always shifting the goal of my website a bit.

2016

Let's start in 2016: I am soon to land my first full-time dev job and have already worked on and launched multiple project, like Streamfinity v1. The UK voted to leave the EU and I wanted to start my little internet-journey.

Not long after that in October, I can present – a somewhat complete portfolio showing off projects and linking to my socials.

2018

The year of Material Design, I took an open source web template and adjusted it to my liking.

Shifting my personal style towards an outline-like brand due to a designer trying out their first personal brand design for me, I re-launched my website in this minimal style. Looking back on that - what did I think?

2019

This did not last long and I went back to a sidebar orientated landing page.

2020

This went through a lot iterations and I landed on a architecture-like grid pattern.

2021

Same idea – different styles.

2023

The last design held the streak of the longest lasting style. Well in 2023 I landed on a layout I really liked, with a 4-column style grid linking to blog, projects, GitHub and my newly launched photo gallery! Looking back – I still love it.

Again it went through some iterations, I was playing with colors and fonts. The thing I am most proud of and which is still present: The play with my social media handles, URL and email.

Around that time I started using the Statamic CMS, not needing to deploy the site on every change.

The last iteration before this one, off-white, balanced, orange primary color.

2026

I mean – you're seeing it. Mono font, still orange primary color.