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Homemade Rustic Personal Website

Prep time: 6-10 hours
Cuisine: web devonese
Calories per serving: -20
this_site/code.jpg

This homemade website recipe is inspired by my travels to obscure hand-crafted sites such as solarpaneltilt.com and bare-bones knowledge bases like hyperphysics. Visiting places like these brings me back to a simpler time. A time before web pages were the dynamic, ad-riddled, tracker-infested content we've become so accustom to in the era of web 2.0.

Seeing a stranger's obscure obsession hastily plastered onto the net sparks a unique joy. It's that sense of discovery, of wandering off the beaten digital trail and into the untamed forest of information.

Some might prefer that these wild netizens spend a little time garnishing their sites with social media integration, proper navigation, or colors that don't make your eyes bleed. Those people make excellent points, but this recipe is not for those who value style over substance. It's for those who prefer the simple things in life, like the fantastic flavor of home-cooked HTML.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Begin by combining python and docutils. Stir vigorously to produce HTML files from RestructuredText (rst) source files that are much easier to read than raw HTML.
  2. Add folders with additional rst files. These files will be pages on the website when the recipe is complete.
  3. Heat up a python "make" script that scans through folders and spits out html content. Set aside.
  4. Create a folder for each post that will be part of your site. Sprinkle in the JSON by creating metadata for the post in JSON form. The JSON will contain information for the post previews as well as any other info you might want to associate with the post in the future.
  5. Eat an inappropriate amount of Cheez-Its
  6. Saute a custom script that uses the JSON metadata to create post previews on the landing page.
  7. Tear your hair out for a hour trying to get the vertical alignment on the post previews right.
  8. Stabilize the mixture with the custom CSS and HTML to prevent the formatting from being too hideous. This is an optional step.
  9. Returning to the make script, incorporate the custom post preview generator.
  10. Let simmer before injecting header content at the top of every page source file.
  11. Roll out the make script until it is creating and copying all files necessary for the HTML site into an output directory.
  12. Garnish with the actual content
  13. Let cool and serve from the hosting platform of your choice

Notes

To make this recipe gluten-free, substitute potato chips for the Cheez-Its.