susam.net VS maze

I have a similar setup for my personal and project websites. Some similarities and differences:

* I use Linode VMs ($5/month).

* I too use Debian GNU/Linux.

* The initial configuration of the VM is coded as a shell script: https://github.com/susam/dotfiles/blob/main/linode.sh

* Project-specific or service-specific configuration is coded as individual Makefiles. This takes care of creatng An example: https://github.com/susam/susam.net/blob/main/Makefile

* The software is written in Common Lisp. In case of a personal website or blog, a static website is generated by a Common Lisp program. In case of an online service or web application, the service is written as a Common Lisp program that uses Hunchentoot to process HTTP requests and return HTTP responses.

* I use Nginx too. Nginx serves the static files as well as functions as a reverse proxy when there are backend services involved. Indeed TLS termination is an important benefit it offers. Other benefits include rate limiting requests, configuring an allowlist for HTTP headers to protect the backend service, etc.

I began developing personal websites in 2001. It was a time when people like me would develop personal websites just because we could. It didn't matter whether we had something useful to say or if anyone visited the website. All that mattered was that it was fun! I still maintain my website in the same spirit.

I do share the technical posts from my websites on HN and Reddit hoping to get some feedback but that's not the primary motive. Also, there were no HN and Reddit in 2001. Back then I used to write for myself and I still do so now. My personal website is a way for me to keep an archive of some fun things I know so that my future self can look back at them when needed or desired. Only a few days ago, I added a jokes page[1] to my website just because I thought it would be nice to keep my favourite jokes somewhere easily accessible.

As years go by, I've found that the friction of editing and publishing new posts or pages to my website has only become less. First came, virtual private servers that swayed me away from shared web hosting solutions. Then came Git which made it incredibly efficient and convenient to keep a change history of my website and sync it to any system. I write my pages in plan HTML using Emacs. Then git add; git commit; make pub [2] and the updated website is published within seconds. A Common Lisp program reads all my HTML pages, adds a common theme and template to them and writes them out to a directory Nginx can read from. It is as low friction as it can get that suits my taste and preferences while maintaining complete flexibility on the website.

It has been 13 years since I wrote my first "Hello!" and while HTML and web development and publishing has evolved a lot since then, I am still having fun!

[1] https://susam.net/maze/jokes.html

[2] https://github.com/susam/susam.net/blob/main/Makefile#L144

Source code [0] is available on GitHub; looks like they wrote their own simple site generator.

I've been thinking about something similar (maybe even simpler) for my blog too.

[0]: https://github.com/susam/susam.net

It does appear to handcrafted HTML, generated using [1].

> This is a static website generated using a Common Lisp program. See github.com/susam/maze for the source code of this website[2]

> Just like the original website, every line of HTML and CSS that appears in the website is handcrafted.[3]

[1] https://github.com/susam/maze/blob/main/site.lisp

[2] https://susam.net/maze/about.html

[3] https://github.com/susam/maze

Thanks for commenting about this issue here. I had accidentally removed the CSS code for pre, code, etc. in a recent commit. Fixed it now.[1] You should no longer see this issue after a hard refresh.

[1]: https://github.com/susam/maze/commit/1d58e13

Here's mine:

- https://susam.in/blog/ (Polished)

- https://susam.in/maze/ (Raw, unfiltered, unpolished)

Here are some others I have been following for more than two decades and still quite fond of:

- https://blog.xkcd.com/

- https://krebsonsecurity.com/

Also Susam's Maze