I have a new* website

Well, kinda. It’s not really new as you can see. The typeface is—probably—still the same, the layout is mostly the same but lots of things have changed. Let me go through them

Typefaces

This site is now—potentially—using web fonts. I’m saying potentially because if you’re reading this on a Mac or on something running iOS you’re probably seeing a system font. My old site was designed around the Iowan typeface but that’s only available on iOS and Mac so most people were seeing a different version using one of the other available serif typefaces. That choice was because I went through a phase where I was trying to push my site toward extreme minimalism. And if you ask me, I had quite the success in that regard. My site was just 1 single HTTP request, the CSS was stupidly optimized and everything was stupid fast and stupid lightweight. But the designer in me was bothered by this and I decided to bring back a web font. If you’re on Windows or Android you’re now getting served Iowan as a web font. I’m also now using a sans-serif font for a couple of small details. I have no idea what you’re seeing because I’m defaulting on a system font.

I also messed with the typography a little bit and changed a few things here and there but the site should still feel mostly the same. I’m not done fine-tuning all this and I’m sure I’ll keep changing little things here and there for months but I had enough and I decided to push it live.

New “Where do you go from here?” section

Back when I designed my site, that section between the content of the post and the archive was meant to be a place to store my contact info and not much else. But it ended up being a place to dump all sorts of stuff and there were just too many links and I didn’t want to add more to make things worse.

That’s why I decided to rethink that section entirely and it’s now a lot more organised but still quite minimal. All the old links are still there but now there’s direct access to two new things.

Guestbook

The first of those two new things is a guestbook. I thought about making one months ago but back then I didn’t want to mess with my site. But now it’s here and I can’t wait to see what you people out there are going to write on it.

Supporters

The second is the supporters page. I don’t want kindness to go unnoticed and I plan to make that page a lot more useful and structured. I want to provide as much value as possible to those who are kind enough to support what I do and that’s going to be just one of the places where I plan to do it.

Closing thoughts

I’m quite happy with this subtle refresh. My site’s been the same for almost 7 years at this point but I still think it works quite well so I don’t want to completely redesign it. At least not yet. Maybe in another 7 years.

As always, my inbox is always open so if you want to share your thoughts you know what to do. And don’t forget to sign my guestbook!