The new website – cms to static

So here it is: the new static version of jsimonvanderwalt.com!

My first website was started around 2001 and was hand-coded in html.

Sometime in 2013-ish I moved to WordPress, a database-driven CMS. After messing around for a while with hosting wp myself, I got fed-up with constantly self-managing updates and security issues and decided just to pay for wordpress.com.

As the web developed, I became less and less fond of wordpress. I hated the block-based Gutenberg editor, which is just frustrating for someone who already ^ thinks in html.

Around 2014 I started livecoding. Through my involvement in that scene, I became aware of two things: Markdown, and the idea of a 'static' website, like the ones that I was seeing used for documentation of domain-specific languages for music. Markdown was perfect for me: for years I have anyway been in the habit of doing all of my writing first of all in BBEdit, with markdown-like shortcuts for bullets, headings and emphases.

Finally: one of the main purposes of this website is as a repository for around 30 years of creative work as a musician. Having this as a static website means that I can host a lot of the actual content – particularly .pdf files and audio – as part of the site itself, rather than relying on external silos. I have some reason to hope that, when I'm no longer around, all the stuff that I have made will still 'be there' in some coherent form.