Colophon

(Note from Ryan: A colophon is a note at the end of a book. It describes how the book was made. This is that, but for a website.)

This site is small on purpose. No tracking. No JavaScript frameworks. Just text and a fast server.

Here’s how I made it:

Generator

Built with Hugo. It takes Markdown files and turns them into a static website. No database. No moving parts. Fast.

Design

Styled with Pico.css. It’s a classless CSS framework. That means plain HTML looks good without adding a bunch of extra code.

Hosting

The code lives on GitHub. Every push to the main branch triggers a build on Cloudflare Pages. Cloudflare serves it from edge servers around the world. It loads fast everywhere.

Fonts

System fonts only. No font files are downloaded. Your browser uses whatever it already has.

Writing

Written in Markdown. Stored as plain text files. No CMS.

Philosophy

Why go through all this trouble just to build an ugly website? Why not use WordPress?

Wordpress is overkill. It requires special hosting, a database, plugin updates, premium themes, and is a target for hackers.

That’s a lot to manage for a site that mostly just needs to show some text.

Plain HTML has no login page to brute force. No plugins with vulnerabilities. No database to corrupt.

It’s just files. Static files are honest. They are exactly what they look like.

And afterall, words are the product.

On most sites, the words are what people came for. Everything else is packaging. A lot of sites got that ratio backwards. This one tries not to.

Every website should start with words. Add styling later. Add it sparingly, if at all.

Some sites get it right. Justin Jackson’s essay on words. Berkshire Hathaway. Craigslist.

Those sites load instantly, say what they mean, and get out of the way. Nobody complains that they’re ugly. They work.

Last updated May 2026.