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This is going to be a shorter post just so I can jot down some of the things I want to do in order to change this website. At the moment it’s basically just a normal site generated with Hugo using a theme called Paige that I downloaded, and while this does serve me really well, there are certainly things I would prefer to make different.

The look

Currently I would say this site looks okay at the moment. It’s certainly very legible and clean, but it also feels a bit empty and soulless to me, especially with its light theme. Something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is actually a service called Cow Sites that basically lets you easily make a pretty, retro-looking website online. I’m a really huge fan of the theme of the landing page, and to be honest it’s exactly the kind of thing I’d like to turn this website into. However, I’m unsure if the generated “cowsites” can be self-hosted or not, and I’m also not sure how much JavaScript dependence it has (which is important to me because)

No JS

This is already something that basically works on my website, but to explain, I don’t want my website to require JavaScript. This isn’t because I use NoScript on my browser, because I actually don’t (though I know one person who does, and if you’re reading this bberberov, you are really cool), but I want my website to load fast and use as minimal resources on everyone’s computer as possible.

Currently this site basically does work without JS, but I’ve noticed that if you block JS, it will display a message at the very bottom saying “JavaScript is required”. Guess it’s just a Hugo thing or something. It would please me if that message were removed :)

The goal, at least for me, is to end up with a website that is so simple and so lightweight that it could be rendered on the Nintendo DSi Web Browser. If I can achieve that, I think it is entirely fair to say that the site is fairly lightweight. Bonus points if I can also render it on Netscape Navigator or something.

Okay actually I just tried loading the site on my 3DS and that didn’t even work. I assumed the Nintendo 3DS Web Browser does not support HTTPS, but google.com somehow works and appears to be running under HTTPS. I also tested one of my professor’s coursework sites, which is just plain HTML, and it loads fine on my 3DS. Not sure if it would on my DSi though, because I think there is a very real chance that browser doesn’t support HTTPS, so let’s just move the goalpost from “running on DSi” to “running on 3DS”!

Upload blogs and poems more easily

Two reasons for this. The first is obvious: I am going to be more encouraged to write if it is easier for me to upload this stuff. Currently my workflow is: write a md file, put it in my website’s hugo content folder, build the website with hugo, sync my changes to my server via Nextcloud, and then copy the compiled website to /var/www/html. It works fine enough, and if I wanted to I could probably automate some of that, but it would be even nicer if I could potentially have a web interface for doing this. Because…

Well, this convuluted setup, and the fact that I alone have the password to my server, means that poor Brooke can’t really upload anything here. 🥹 So this is definitely something that needs to be fixed, because it’s so lonely with me changing the website by myself!

Music archive

This is a often-discussed topic but I think it would be worth trying out offering free downloads for our music. But, with a catch. Right now the plan is to charge for our album on Bandcamp, maybe $7 a copy. But a lot of people probably either can’t afford to pay or do not want to pay (understandable). I could just make our music pay-what-you-want, but the problem with that is that Bandcamp limits the amount of free downloads you can offer each month. But it’s not an issue with this site because… well, I own it, and I’m in control of the server.

So with this, I can have a section of the website that is basically just an archive of all our music, both so people can listen to demos that weren’t uploaded to Bandcamp (though I think ideally all of our demos should be on Bandcamp), and so people can listen to our music for free if they don’t want to pay. And for those who share this website around, I can include a donation link on the archive so those who like what they hear can give us a tip!

Anyway, it’s just an idea, but I do think it is fun trying out less conventional monetization.

Better band art

Something I’ve really slept on is making more artwork for our band. Right now all we really have is the silly image of grass I edited as a sort of placeholder. It would be really nice if we had a logo, but I can’t design logos for shit. More art could make it much easier for me to come up with a more coherent design for the website. But speaking of design,

Personalized page designs for the Alex section and Brooke section

It would be really cool if the design of the member sections of the site were different. At the moment the only thing that is different is the site’s accent color when you click on either my poetry or Brooke’s art, but it would be much more fun if the background color was also different, and maybe if there were also cute gifs lining the margins of the page to add more personalization.

Streaming support?

This kind of goes against the No JS thing, but it would be cool if, upon visiting the website, there was a widget you could click on to play a sample of our music, in order to immediately get an idea of what we’re about. Should be easy enough to implement, but probably impossible if I want to remain JavaScript-free.