edit: new-website

content/posts/new-website/index.md

@@ -1,100 +1,97 @@
 ---
 title: "New Website"
-date: "2025-05-11T12:00:00-06:00"
+date: "2025-05-16T13:16:00-06:00"
 description: "There's finally a new website at d-b.ca."
 summary: "I've published my personal website. A brief history of some past endeavours, and some details on the technology behind the new site."
 ---
 
-I've finally gotten around to publishing a proper website here at
+I've finally published a proper website at [https://d-b.ca/](https://d-b.ca/).
-[https://d-b.ca/](https://d-b.ca/). The last time I had anything up on this
+The last time I had anything live on this domain was over 20 years ago,
-domain was over 20 years ago, according to the
+according to the [Wayback Machine](https://web.archive.org/). What took so
-[Wayback Machine](https://web.archive.org/). What took me so long? Over the
+long? Over the years I've learned a lot, and I'm constantly experimenting with
-years I've learned a lot, and I'm constantly trying out new ways of getting
+new ways of getting things done. This site, while useful in its own right, is
-things done. This site, although intended to be useful in its own right, is a
+a culmination of the platform I've developed to host it.
-culmination of the platform I've developed to host it.
 
 ## History
 
-My very first personal website was developed while I was a student at the
+My first personal website was developed while I was a student at the
 [University of Alberta](https://ualberta.ca), near the end of the previous
-century. The web itself hadn't been around for very many years, but the
+century. The web itself was still quite young, but the university provided
-university did provide the means for every student to publish web content.
+students with the means to publish web content. It was mostly a novelty at the
-It was mostly a novelty at the time, and didn't last beyond my time at the
+time and didn't last beyond my time at school, but it sparked my interest in
-school, but it was part of the beginning of how I got interested in Internet
+Internet technologies and their applications.
-technologies and how they can be applied.
 
-That early site did include one interesting feature. I developed a mechanism
+That early site included one interesting feature. I developed a mechanism to
-to automatically update a page every time I logged into one of the school's
+automatically update a page every time I logged into one of the school's
 computers, so my friends could find me if they wanted to.
 
 ### Self-Hosting
 
-I've always been an avid self-hoster. It started when I was working at a local
+I've always been an avid self-hoster. It began when I was working at a local
-Internet services provider. I was able to get a special deal on a
+Internet service provider. I was able to get a special deal on a
-business-class broadband connection at home, which came with a `/28` subnet
+business-class broadband connection at home, which included a small network
-that I could use. I dedicated the largest machine I had on hand at the time as
+block (a `/28`, or 16 IP addresses) that I could use. I dedicated my most
-my server, and developed many services, including a new website.
+powerful machine to be my server and developed several services, including a
+new website.
 
-My website at this time was nothing fancy, and was mostly geared towards
+My website at that time wasn't fancy, and was geared primarily towards
 experimentation. I developed a simple content management system from scratch
-in PHP3, which I used to publish a blog. It had some integration with mailing
+in PHP3, which I used to publish a blog. It also integrated with mailing
-lists, which I was also experimenting with quite a lot at the time.
+lists, another area I was exploring at the time.
 
 ### D-B.CA
 
 I hadn't registered a domain name of my own in those early days, so everything
-was listed under a friend's domain name. In late 2002, I decided to finally
+resided under a friend's domain. In late 2002, I decided to finally register
-register one of my own, mainly so I could have a stable email address. I came
+one of my own, primarily so I could have a stable email address. I came up
-up with `d-b.ca`, because someone was squatting on `db.ca` --- which is still
+with `d-b.ca` because someone was squatting on `db.ca` – and still is, I might
-squatted on to this very day, I might add.
+add.
 
-Early on I was mostly involved in operating my email services and other
+Early on, I focused mostly on operating my email services and other
-experiments, and didn't focus much on a website. There were a few test pages
+experiments, with little attention paid to a website. There were a few test
-at times, but nothing serious.
+pages at times, but nothing substantial.
 
 ## Modern Technology
 
-One of the projects I've been keeping an eye on is [Hugo](https://gohugo.io/).
+One of the projects I've been following is [Hugo](https://gohugo.io/). I've
-I've seen and worked with various web content management systems in the past,
+seen and worked with various web content management systems in the past, and
-and they tend to be rather cumbersome and a source of security concerns. Hugo
+they often feel cumbersome and present security concerns. Hugo is an example
-is an example of what's called a "Static Site Generator", which transforms a
+of a "Static Site Generator," which transforms a source description of a site
-source description of a site into the set of static resources used to serve
+into the static resources used to serve it – much like a compiler. The
-the site, much like a compiler. The resulting static resources can be served
+resulting static resources can be served as regular files from any web
-as regular files from any web service, without the need for dynamically
+service, without the need for dynamically generating content upon request from
-generating content upon request from a database like a traditional CMS.
+a database, as traditional CMS systems do.
 
-Using Hugo is much easier with a good base template, of which there are
+Using Hugo is much easier with a good base template, and there are
 [many to choose from](https://themes.gohugo.io/). I've chosen one called
 ["Blowfish"](https://blowfish.page/) for this site.
 
-Another benefit of a static site generator is that all of the sources for the
+Another benefit of a static site generator is that all the sources for the
-site can be treated like software code, meaning that it's simple to use
+site can be treated like software code, making it simple to use development
-development tools like git for version control. I keep the sources for this
+tools like Git for version control. I keep the sources for this site in a
-site in a public repository on my own git server, have a look at this link
+public repository on my own Git server. Feel free to take a look:
-if you like.
 
 {{< gitea repo="d-b.ca/web" >}}
 
 ### CI/CD
 
-I have also set up a CI/CD pipeline to handle building and deploying the site
+I've also set up a CI/CD pipeline to build and deploy the site whenever
-whenever anything is changed in the source repository. The CI portion is
+changes are made to the source repository. The CI portion is triggered by a
-triggered by a push to the web repository. It runs a workflow that builds the
+push to the web repository. It runs a workflow that builds the site and
-site and then packages the resulting artifacts into a container image based on
+packages the resulting artifacts into a container image based on
 [Caddy](https://caddyserver.com/). The build container with Hugo is another
-image that I maintain in this repository.
+image I maintain in this repository:
 
 {{< gitea repo="d-b.ca/hugo-builder" >}}
 
-Next, the workflow updates the CD Gitops repository to deploy this new version
+Next, the workflow updates the CD GitOps repository to deploy this new version
 to a private staging site. When I want to publish the new version as the
-production site, I use my regular Gitops repository to update the image tag
+production site, I use my regular GitOps repository to update the image tag,
 and the rest happens automatically.
 
 {{< gitea repo="d-b.ca/db-cd" >}}
 
 ## Underlying Platform
 
-In my next article, I'll describe more about the platform that this site is
+In my next article, I'll describe the platform this site is running on, and
-running on, and some of the history and desicions that were made to get
+some of the history and decisions that drove its design.
-everything up and running.