Why I Built This Site by Hand

As they say, Hello World!

There’s something about building your own website that feels like building your own bookshelf. You could buy one from IKEA. It would work fine. It would hold your books. But you wouldn’t look at it and think, “I made that.” Granted, I made this with the help of Claude Code but ultimately the design decisions, content, and feel came down to my preferences.

This site runs on Hugo, deploys from a GitHub repo, and costs me nothing beyond the domain name. No monthly subscription. No CMS login. No themes marketplace. Just markdown files, a little HTML templating, and a color palette I’ve been refining across every device I own for the past year.

The best part? I can add and edit this from my Obsidian or a simple VSCode adjustment. Welcome and enjoy the site!