A new website!

You will likely have noticed I haven't posted anything in a few years. This is due to a few reasons, most of them are personal, but a few were because I wanted my website to be more than just a gatsby template and some markdown files.

Gatsby was great, but the times have changed and it was time to move on. I wanted to do more with my website, and I wanted to do it myself. I wanted to be able to add features, and make it look the way I wanted it to look. I wanted to be able to write my own code, and not just rely on a template. I wanted to be able to write my own features, and not just rely on a plugin. I wanted to be able to write my own styles, and not just rely on a theme.

Oh don't get me wrong, the basis of these posts (for now) are still markdown files, but now it's running on my preferred stack of SvelteKit. This means a few things:

• I can still write my posts in markdown
• I customize the content to my liking.
• If I want to add a feature, I can do it myself.
• It's not just a static site, but a full fledged web app! This is probably the thing I am most excited about. Yes it's not quite the same performance as a static site, but that's okay. I have server-side rendering, so I can still do all the SEO things I want to do, but with the benefits of having a server, a database, etc.
• it's actually representative of my skills as a developer.

This also has a few drawbacks:

• The main one is going to be painful, but since there will be a backend portion, this site will be closed source at least for now. I am not ready to open source the backend portion of this site. I still wish to have a fully open-source site, but it will remain closed for now. I am sorry about that, but I hope you understand. I have decided to open source the site. You can find it here.
• I have to maintain it myself.
• I am responsible for the security of the site.
• I have to pay for hosting.
• It doesn't look the same as it did before... this is a work in progress. My main goal is to get something functional, and then make it look pretty. For that reason I have not yet added the ability to comment on posts, or some of the nice little looks that the old site had. I will get there, but I wanted to get something up and running first.

You can still visit the old site at old.alexswensen.io for a little while longer. I will eventually take it down, but I want to make sure everything is working here first.

Anyway, as a momento to the old site, here is a picture of what once was. I hope you like the new one!