This post is best viewed on my website on desktop!

Part of my decision to begin migrating away from Substack towards my own website is the infinite customisability now available to me. I can design and implement freely to my heart's content.

Here's a list of design choices and their rationale:

  • Sidenotes:
    • These sidenotes help provide additional information and allow me to expand on points in interesting ways!1 They act similarly to footnotes, but in a more accessible way.2
  • Copy as Markdown:
    • In the top right of my posts, there's a button to copy the post as Markdown.3 This allows for you guys to easily implement my posts and copy the contents into LLMs like ChatGPT etc, or hand them to an agent to implement!
  • Likes and comments:
    • Likes and comments work on my website natively!
    • The issue with likes and comments usually is that to prevent spam and duplicate likes/comments, you require an account per user.
    • This decreases the accessibility of a lot of blogs because they require readers to sign up to the platform in order to engage with the author and audience.
    • I want my blog to be as accessible as possible, so I use a combination of cookies and anti-spam measures to power comments and likes.
  • Tiny features:
    • If you tap on any item in a list4, the list item glows red! I love putting effort into small interactions to make the website feel alive and fun to use.
    • Tapping on any heading also makes it pulse red!

That's about it so far, will definitely keep improving my system and migrating over. All my work will always be cross-posted to both Substack and my own personal website so don't worry about missing out or having to resubscribe etc!

Footnotes

  1. Here's an example! ↩

  2. I dislike reading posts and derailing my train of thought by scrolling to a reference and scrolling back, so this helps solve that issue (on desktop at least, still an issue with mobile). ↩

  3. I've always wished that more sites offered ways of copying text easily and preserving formatting to help LLMs to better understand the content. ↩

  4. or hover over any item on desktop ↩