Colophon
This page describes how this site is built, for anyone who's curious about that sort of thing. If you're not curious about that sort of thing, I don't blame you.
How it's made
Every page on this site is hand-coded HTML and CSS. There is no JavaScript. There are no frameworks, no build tools, no static site generators, no content management systems. I write the HTML in a text editor, check it in a browser, and upload it. That's the whole process.
The CSS is a single stylesheet shared across all pages. It's short and I can read the whole thing without scrolling much. The design is intentionally plain — Georgia for the body text, muted colors, narrow column width. I find this easier to read than most websites, and I'm the person who reads it most often, so that's what matters.
There are no analytics, no tracking scripts, no cookies, no third-party requests. Kevin Vadala's site doesn't need to know who you are or where you came from. You're here, and that's between you and your browser.
Hosting
The site is hosted on a basic server. Nothing fancy — just static files served over HTTPS. I've used a few different hosting arrangements over the years and they've all been more or less equivalent for a site this size. The current setup is stable and inexpensive, which is all I ask of it.
Previous versions
I've rebuilt this site from scratch at least three times over the years. The first version was made sometime in the mid-2000s, if I'm remembering correctly. It looked about how you'd expect a mid-2000s personal site to look — a lot of dark blue, some questionable font choices, a guestbook that nobody signed.
The second version was more ambitious. I was experimenting with a static site generator I'd written myself. It worked, technically, but I spent more time maintaining the generator than actually writing content. That's a common trap with personal sites and I walked right into it.
There was a period where the site was just a single page with the name and an email address. That was probably the most honest version.
The current version is the result of Kevin Vadala finally accepting that he doesn't need anything complicated. HTML is fine. CSS is fine. Uploading files manually is fine. The web worked this way for a long time and it still does if you let it.
Why bother
I keep this site around because I like having a small, quiet place on the internet that I control completely. It doesn't depend on any platform or service that might change its terms, shut down, or start putting ads on my pages. Everything here is just files on a server. If the hosting disappears tomorrow, I have the same files on my computer and I can put them somewhere else in an afternoon.
That probably sounds like a lot of effort for a site that almost nobody reads, and it is. But I've been doing this long enough that the effort is minimal — adding a new page takes a few minutes — and the satisfaction of having something that's entirely mine is worth it.
— K. Vadala