Well, the thing is, the web apps I work on are complex. Huge APIs, big front-end SPA libraries with lots of plugins.

It’s relaxing to go right back to the absolute basics. To build a lean website, no fluff, no bloat, just substance.

Because I like things that are efficient. Elegant. Fast. Secure.

It’s also a great learning process, throwing away all the frameworks I’m familiar with and starting with the most basic structure possible - a static website served from a file system.

The trigger that kicked off this adventure was actually wanting to get my own domain for email, as a way of extricating myself from the Google ecosystem.

That lead me to iwantmyname.com, a domain registrar that wants everyone to be able to own their own (relevant) web address. They seemed to have a good ethical approach, reasonable prices, and they were from New Zealand!

Luckily my name is uncommon enough that I was able to snag both ronniegane.com and ronniegane.kiwi.

After setting up ProtonMail as my mail server (and also enabling PGP encryption in Gmail through the wonderful FlowCrypt plugin, I was struck by the thought: I’ve got a domain, why don’t I make a website?