how (not) to update your site to version 3
If you're reading this in the future, there's a chance I finally finished v3 of my main site, but odds are also very good that I never did. As of writing I've thrown out at least three different ideas, one of which was, mostly, just a recolor. I'm working on a fourth, and while I like it, I can feel that itch in my back of my mind that says "this one's no good too".
I've read a handful of blogs (sorry, I don't have links) about creating websites and pages that are targeted to data preservation. They tend to recommend similar things: no hotlinking/reliance on outside dependencies. (Bootstrap and jQuery would be good examples here.) Stick mostly to HTML and CSS. Prefer default or system font stacks. Small image sizes. Fewer pages. These are great for ensuring one's site doesn't break when an external dependency changes or disappears, but also great for anyone accessing your site on slower internet speeds (something I certainly take for granted).
Sometimes I see sites built around this philosophy, and I really like them! I like the simplicity of it, the experience of mostly text on the page.
But then I look at my own website, or the vast array of websites out there on the small web (is that what we call it now?). I look at my site, I think about what it would take to align my site with these petite pages I see, and oftentimes I realize that I would, in some sense, be depriving myself, because it's not just the content that I would want to preserve. It's the design itself, the expression of self that comes from putting a chunky drop shadow on all the divs or putting a bouncing shark in the corner, or making a bit of text blink like a shell cursor. That is just as much me as the stuff I've written on each page. The huge array of little web graphics is a representation of me, of the things I like, that speaks in a different language to the written text. Never mind that loading that page is probably a nightmare for some people.
So what's to be done? I can say "heck that" and build something wild, wacky, something that, really, is meant to capture how much fun it was building websites twenty years ago. I can lean into the reasonable philosophies that can make a website last.
I could do both, or neither, some other third option that is a mélange of these and other ideas. Who knows! But I know that every time I look at v2 of my site, I do love it. I love the colors, the shapes, the graphics and even some of my own writing. (Is it too self-absorbed to like one's own writing?)
Maybe the real answer is not to make one site conform to all of this at once, but to make many sites. Maybe one site cannot capture every facet of the self, and maybe even an infinite number never could capture one person, let alone billions. Maybe therein lies the fun, the excitement...and a lot of HTML.
And CSS. (and maybe a bit of JavaScript. I do like my JavaScript stars.)