HomepageDesign

This page explains how my homepage moved from a Zim-based wiki to the minimal static generator that now publishes these pages.

Zim beginnings

For years I maintained this site directly out of Zim. Zim made it easy to sketch ideas, follow wiki links, and export the whole notebook as HTML whenever I wanted to share an update. The design and layout you see in older posts originated in that exported theme, including the ornate background and the habit of organizing pages like a personal wiki.

Static site generator today

Today the site is rebuilt with a tiny static site generator that lives right alongside the content. Everything under md/ is authored in Markdown, and a make pipeline rewrites wiki links, runs cmark-gfm to render HTML, wraps the result in a shared template, and copies any non-Markdown assets into the out/ directory. Deploys are a simple make deploy, which rsyncs the generated files to my DreamHost account. The build footer shows who published the site, when, and from which git revision.

Why change?

Moving to this generator means the whole site is version-controlled and scriptable. I can check diffs, branch drafts, and automate deployment from any machine (or even Cosmopolitan builds someday). It keeps Zim's information architecture while making the publishing workflow reproducible. If you're curious about the raw files or the build logic, the homepage repo is public.