I'm starting to get frustrated at myself when I catch myself saying to people "yeah, I have little draft about this topic but never published it".
If I am OK with an unpolished personal website, I gotta be OK with unpolished thoughts too.
Anyway, here it goes.
New post: https://ohhelloana.blog/in-defense-of-unpolished-websites/ where I ramble about how I don't want to destroy the viewsource experience of my little blog.
Update: fixed-ish! Thanks everyone!
Since we're all here, how come my
<meta name="fediverse:creator" content="@anarodrigues/" />
isn't being picked up? What am I missing?
It still isn't working :blobcatcry:
I threw a few more bits and bobs into my <head> too https://github.com/ohhelloana/ohhelloana/blob/main/src/_includes/partials/head.njk#L47
I know whatever I'm missing is going to be so obvious!
@anarodrigues I love it! I also optimise my website for the viewsource experience. I've added some comments here and there only visible to the viewsource explorer and I keep my CSS split and human readable to multiple files to make it easier to read and follow if someone so desires.
@hamatti ohhhh amazing! I think I'm going to borrow some inspiration from yours 😍
@anarodrigues I think I originally picked the idea up from James' blog and his 100 things to do list
@hamatti Excellent reminder to re-visit that amazing post 💜
@anarodrigues I feel this strongly. I haven't shipped a new site design in many years, despite having worked on it. But I can assure you, I code that shit with *liberal* comments, properly indented and structured. Because _I simply don't believe the modern "best practices" are worth the costs for 90% of websites_.
Power to you. Be an artisan instead of a factory worker.
@mattwilcox hell yeah. I can't think of a case where it is worth it on personal websites at least :)
@anarodrigues 100%, and I'm dubious on a lot of larger types of site too.
All this effort to generate "small efficient code" - but then it all gets gzipped over the wire, there's _gigantic_ bloat of utility classes all over the shop easily doubling the size of the HTML, and a few Mb of JS analytics and a multi-mb PNG logo or dozens of poorly compressed and loaded photos.
Build tools don't fix most "efficiency" problems.
The lies code people sell to themselves is fascinating to see.
@mattwilcox "larger type" website owners don't want to pay back-end developers or front-end developers. They want a "full-stack" to do the back-end in JS and all the front-end tricks, "growth-hacking" (🤮 ) while asking them to copy what someone else is doing.
@anarodrigues Did you add your domain in your profile (in https://front-end.social/settings/verification)?
@HTeuMeuLeu oops, there it is. Thank you!!
@anarodrigues @HTeuMeuLeu which makes sense if you think about it, otherwise people could write fake articles pretending you're the author
@anarodrigues The `/` at the end is the problem I think
@KevinGimbel I just spotted that too! A typo fix is being pushed now.
of course the typos only show themselves after being public about it 😁
@anarodrigues they tend to do this for unknowable reasons :D
@anarodrigues maybe add @front-end.social? Maybe get rid of the / ? That's what I would try
@steltenpower Thanks! I have tried that immediately after originally posting but no luck so far
Maybe https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/32574 helps. I think it says more is needed
Mar 17, 2025, 3:37 PM@anarodrigues it should say "meta property," not "meta name"
Mar 17, 2025, 3:38 PM@anarodrigues look! and I also include how to add the verification via a <link> instead of <a> tags
@joel Right - I did think it was weird that other blogs were using different things! I copied what was literally in the settings/verification of my instance
@anarodrigues @joel ohhh, I wonder if that's what's wrong with mine too
@anarodrigues @joel although, hmm, looks like it worked at some point with "meta name". I'm going to leave it alone for now.
Mar 17, 2025, 3:51 PM@anarodrigues It is working! Markup was right so I tried an old post so it definitely wasn't cached by the mastodon server 🥳
Mar 17, 2025, 3:51 PM@anarodrigues That test post is here for reference https://mas.to/@rknightuk/114178558711993269
@robb Hell yeah! Thanks Robb! I can now sleep at night.
I was just looking up where to test/refresh these cards! 😁
Mar 17, 2025, 3:53 PM@anarodrigues Yeah the cache is aggressive on Mastodon (rightly so) so you need to try with different pages/posts. Glad it's working though ✨
@anarodrigues I suppose I should really publish my Tailwind V4 impressions draft then. I'm just hesitant to post about something so polarising.
@Jbasoo one thing I’ve accepted is that “no thought is original”. Your opinion on something might also be in other people’s minds and everyone might be sitting tight and not sharing it.
@anarodrigues Wonderful sentiment, beautifully written! Can’t wait to read more of your ‘unpolished’ thoughts!
@paulrobertlloyd Thanks Paul ☺️
Mar 13, 2025, 10:18 AM@anarodrigues I'm the same! I've deliberately un-minified my website's source code. I've left the comments in where possible as well.
@Edent comments are the next step for me.
Even for my own benefit - spent too much time yesterday scratching my head trying to remember why I did something months ago.
@Edent @anarodrigues People always seem really surprised that they can view the source of my games and usually see straightforward markup (although I do strip comments from the inlined CSS/JS & crudely minify it)
@anarodrigues what a lovely post - just sent you a message ツ
here's to celebrating un-minified code and the 'view source' ツ ツ
@humanum I will get back to you soon! ☺️
Mar 13, 2025, 2:07 PM@anarodrigues Even unpolished thoughts help feed the LLM machine. You are doing your part. 🙏 😉
So true. Today we have codepen and people's source is often public on GH, but when I started doing html I learned everything by inspecting others' source! (and still do)
Regarding my web garden I'm in the process of pushing unminified source in production !
Only the html for now (CSS too messy right now. Not ready yet 😄)
Comments are in progress (James src is worse inspecting)
I'm also exposing php src on each page! (ex. https://villepreux.net/about/#source-code). No need to go to github 😉 !
@villapirorum ohhh that tooggle to expose the php is so cool! I’m sure someone has benefited a lot from it!
@anarodrigues Hell yeah! ✊ I learned from "View Source" back in the day, too, and I strongly believe in making that same experience available to the next generation.
Insane complexity is indistinguishable from intentional obfuscation.
Also: 💯 agree on unpolished thoughts and websites!