Building this site, one small decision at a time

This isn’t a launch announcement. The site is still a work in progress, but its publishing path is in place: a push to the main branch triggers Forgejo Actions to build the site and deploy it to Cloudflare Pages. I haven’t chosen a custom domain yet. Think of this as a note from the workbench while I continue to shape it.

A place to put things

I started building this because I was curious about Astro and wanted a small corner of the internet of my own. I work with infrastructure every day, but building a website is a different kind of problem: part writing, part design, part figuring out why a perfectly reasonable CSS rule is doing something unexpected.

The project began with Astro’s blog starter. That gave me the basic pages and a straightforward way to write posts in Markdown. From there, I could focus on making the site feel like mine instead of assembling a complicated system before I had anything to publish.

I want this to be a place for practical notes: infrastructure, Linux, Microsoft platforms, automation, and the security topics I’m learning more about. Some posts might be useful references. Others may just be a record of a project or an idea I don’t want to lose.

English and German

I live in Switzerland, so having the site in both English and German felt natural. English is the default; visitors can switch languages themselves, and a German-speaking browser is sent to the German home page unless a language choice was saved earlier.

The posts need actual translations, though. A language button can’t turn one version into another by itself. I’m setting up each translated pair to share a URL slug, so the switch can take you to the matching article when both versions exist.

Finding the right atmosphere

The first design pass was clean and editorial. I like that direction, but I also wanted the site to carry a little more of my personality. I’ve been a Zelda fan since I was a kid, and the Lost Woods have always stuck with me: deep greens, quiet paths, mist, and small points of warm light.

I’m exploring that mood through the colours and details rather than using game artwork or turning the site into a Zelda shrine. It still needs to be easy to read and useful first. The atmosphere should sit behind the words, not get in their way.

Still being built

There’s plenty left to decide: a custom domain, the final shape of the design, and what I want to write about next. That’s fine. I’d rather let the site grow as I use it than pretend I know exactly what it should become on day one.

For now, this is the first note. More will follow when there’s something worth writing down.