Colophon

A colophon is a fancy shmancy term from book publishing. In that context, it’s a page that contains information about the book itself. In the case of a website, it’s a page that talks about the website itself. How it’s made? What tools are being used? Things like that. It’s sometimes also referred to as a “meta” page.

The code for this website is fully available on GitHub. If you want to deep dive and look at the details, feel free to jump into that.

This website is built with astro, a web framework / static site generator. I picked astro because it generates static content but it lets you easily sprinkle in more dynamic components when you need them. This is great because you get the blazing fast performance of static HTML without sacrificing dynamic components. For example, I use this feature for my little avatar at the top left of the header. Try it for yourself. Give it a click.

Astro lets you choose a lot of stuff about the stack / tools you use. So here’s a rapid-fire list of what I use:

• Code and logic is in TypeScript.
• Most components are made in React (.tsx) with a few made with astro components (.astro).
  • I use shadcn/ui as a starter for most components.
• Styling is done through Tailwind.
  • Base styles for text content are done through the Tailwind typography plugin.
• Most pages and articles are written in markdown (.md). There are a few exceptions to that rule:
  • I use MDX (.mdx) for pages that are mostly text content but need a bit of fancy logic or components.
  • I use astro components (.astro) for pages with a more complex structure.
  • I use astro endpoints to generate pages or files that aren’t HTML (RSS feed, robots.txt, etc.)

I use Netlify for hosting. It’s a CDN that’s pretty great for hosting static content. So far, it hasn’t cost me anything. It seems like their free tier is pretty generous. We’ll see how long that lasts.

My domain (dotboris.io) is registered through Cloudflare. They sell domain names at cost so it’s probably one of the cheapest ways to get a domain. I also use them as my DNS server. This doesn’t cost me anything since I fit in their free tier. What’s nice with Cloudflare is that they’re a mature cloud provider with the kind of features you’ve come to expect: MFA, API access, infra as code providers, etc. This is important to me because I also use my domain for my home server. These features come in handy for things like generating certificates.

I don’t use any form of tracking or analytics service. While I think that it’d be nice to have some stats on this website, I don’t think that it’s worth tracking you over it. I don’t like getting tracked so why should I track you. I simply trust that people stumble on my website from time to time and enjoy themselves.

I don’t code or write using AI but I do sometimes use it to review my content. I’m really bad with typos and it’s helpful for spotting those. When I do use AI, I always use a local model that I host through Ollama. I usually interact with those self-hosted models through OpenCode.