Colophon - how this site is currently built

Over the years I have used a lot of Content Management Systems - as at 2024 I think it is 18 – could be a few more! Not all have been used to run this site which is currently in version 8 and I have tended to version number based on the system I am using to build out the site.

Eleventy

What's Eleventy I hear you ask! It isn't that well know, yet, but has been around for a few years and getting better all the time. Eleventy is an engine that builds out a flat file site. There are massive advantages for a flat file site, and of course a few disadvantages.

It's really really quick - both to build locally and to load when someone visits. There is nothing you need to hack to get it to do what you want it to and there is plenty of community to get you coding - have a look at 11ty Bundle. There is nothing to upgrade on the server - no dependencies. I can build locally, version control using Git and deploy automatically to the server when I am ready.

Eleventy, 11ty, the simple static site generator also has an active and very helpful community and a site that gathers posts about peoples exploits, 11ty Bundle where you can find useful links categorised into topics.

Writing

Still not using AI - though perhaps I should feed content like this page into AI to make it more readable - but hey, perhaps not! I do still use Hemingway Editor when I am writing the articles and that allows me to jot down a lot of thoughts and then come back to it a while later and sort it into an article.

Images

I have been using Affinity Suite, now part of Canva, for some years now and they are a subscription free professional-level alternative to Adobe design and image products.

Design

I based version 8 on the colours used in Mastodon as I was getting more involved with it at the time I was redesigning this site. The font stack I have left to the readers own system so it will look different on different platforms. There are no fonts to download so that makes this site even faster!

Layout is using Every Layout which is of course superb.

Build

I use Microsoft Visual Studio Code to write my code because it is free and it has a terminal integrated allowing me to quickly, and easily (that important as I am not a Git pro), build the site and even run a local server to view what I am building. VS Code also has Git built in again allowing me to press a button to create a Commit (snapshot) and Synchronise those pages with my private Github repo.

Hosting

I was hosting on Netlify as it is free for the amount of usage I use and it auto deploys whenever I change my Github Repo. That means I can press a button to create a Commit and then press another button to synchronise it, that pushes the files to Github, Netlify spots the change and pulls the site onto my account and deploys them. It's more complex than that but that is the gist of it. This takes about a minute and often I will pop up my Netlify dashboard in a browser to see if I can launch the matching pairs tile game they have for while you are waiting for the deploy to finish. I have never completed the game before the deploy but I have done it in 11 moves! Since February 2025 I have switched the hoisting to Cloudflare as Bing webmaster tools was telling me it was getting a lot of errors. I have also taken advantage of Cloudflare's IndexNow integration that requests Bing index the pages automatically.

Currently both Cloudflare and Netlify are deploying the repo when it is updated which means if needed can be switched between the two hosts by changing the DNS CNAME entry, giving me a robust hosting solution.

Analytics

These days I pay for my analytics using Fathom Analytics as they allow me to run multiple sites on one account so I have a lovely dashboard with all my multiple side projects all together – great overview! And I can dive deeper into each site to see whats going on. It is a lot less complex than Google Analytics and easier to use.