Why I wrote a Blog in HTML and CSS

I wanted to create a blog that is simple, fast, and easy to maintain. Using HTML and CSS allows me to have full control over the structure and styling of the content without relying on complex frameworks or content management systems. There is no build pipeline, no dependencies to manage, and no server-side rendering required.

By writing the blog in plain HTML and CSS, I can focus on the content itself. It also ensures that the blog loads quickly and works well across different devices and browsers. If I do decide to move to a framework in the future, I am starting from a simple and predictable baseline. In fact, I will probably start adding good ol' fashioned JavaScript to this blog in the coming months.

This approach also keeps the site small and lightweight, reducing my costs for hosting and serving the site.

Deploying the Blog

Deploying the blog is straightforward since it is just static HTML and CSS files. I can host it on any web server or static site hosting service without worrying about server-side configurations or complex deployment pipelines. As is, I have created an account in Azure and check this code into Azure Devops. From there, the site deploys to an Azure Storage Blob as a static site. I didn't have to setup anything too complicated, just a simple pipeline that uses Azure CLI to push new content to the blob storage account.

This setup allows me to push changes to the site in seconds. It provides a simple and efficient workflow for managing the blog content and the odds of something breaking are minimal. Believe me when I say that simpler is quite often better. I was able to go from idea to live site in a matter of hours. Most of that time was wasted on remembering the credentials to get into Go Daddy so I could reconfigure the DNS.

The Struggles

It's not all sunshine and roses. The biggest challenge is maintaining all the pages that I am creating. For instance, while creating this blog, I had to update three different html files to add the navigation link to the blog. Could I redesign the site so it wasn't an issue? Sure, but for now this is how I am going to do it.

I am no designer. I will not win any awards for the visual appeal of this blog. It is functional. It is legible. It requires very little from me to maintain, which is exactly what I wanted when I created the index.html file.