I’ve seen this from shellsharks and wanted to give it a go!
- Please introduce yourself. Hey, it’s Kenan.
- How long have you been making websites? The earliest memory I could remember is 2004-2005, where I was trying to create my website for GPU reviews because I wanted to do something similar to computer magazines like CHIP. I used a free domain from an e-mail provider. That was a thing at that time. You could get a subdomain from them. After that I did some stuff but stopped for a long time afterwards until 2011-2012.
- And what got you into the hobby? I like creating stuff and dabbling with it.
- What kind of website are you most interested in? Technical websites, blogs, interactive infographics, scientific writings.
- What’s your workflow? Do you plan your websites out thoroughly or do you come up with the design as you go along? Mostly as I go along. I also have a todo list where I dump stuff if I get an idea.
- Please link to your biggest inspirations. Probably Gwern. Also Neil Panchal.
- What’s your favourite part about making websites? Having a playground and a complete blank sheet I guess.
- And the thing you struggle with the most? Not a struggle maybe, but as much as I like file-based routing, I am not very happy with the authoring experience in Markdown/MDX files. Especially for custom stuff.
- Do you keep the same layout on all of your pages? Or do you use different ones? I did for a long time in the v1 of this website, but now I’m trying some different layouts.
- How confident are you with CSS? Quite confident as I like to think. Probably not that much in reality.
- Do you know how to correctly use <dl>? Nope.
- What is your favourite HTML element? Probably
- If you’re making a new web page from scratch, what is the first thing you do? If it’s content-heavy, then
- Do you know JavaScript? Yes, and I don’t like it. I think it is a burden we all need to get along with. Web should have been based on a better foundation than this.
- How about PHP? I do. Not so much, but enough. I wrote a plugin for my DokuWiki instance once. I guess that’s enough to say I could find my way in a PHP codebase in need. Also I can modify Wordpress sites.
- Does your website have a theme that you stick to? For sure. It was quite minimal and retro in the v1. Now it is a little more minimal-modern. I’m sure it will look different next year though.
- Are you more focused on content or design? 70% design I believe. Simply because it is my playground. I wish to write more this year though.
- Do you own a domain name? If not, would you ever want to? I own more domain names than I’ll ever need.
- What do you think of nostalgia-focused or “retro” websites? Love’em.
- Is your HTML valid? Do you even check? Not always. But yeah it’s valid. Couple of warnings only.
- What are your opinion on buttons and banners? Fan of them. I’m designing my button section for the footer at the moment.
- What do you think of button walls in particular? Generally like them. But sometimes they are too much, that it distracts.
- If you started over again, would you make something similar or completely different? Every beginning is different. So, completely different.
- Are you envious of other people’s websites? All the time. But in a good way. I love finding a good website and adding it to my favourites.
- What text editor do you use? Neovim and Zed.
- Why do you use that one? Because I’m keyboard oriented and Vim feels like home. I like Zed for the minimal look and use Vim mode in Zed too. I wish Neovim has a better and simple configuration like Helix though. Managing my init.lua and the burden of it keeps me coming to Zed all the time.
- Do you host your image files on your web server, or on another host? I use Astro since a long time and it takes care of image optimizations. So yes, mostly in the server where my website lives.
- This might not be relevant to you, but what’s your opinion on the Neocities vs. Nekoweb debate? I have no idea.
- How much server space would you estimate your main website takes up? The content is probably couple of hundred KB. But the images and the video on the indexpage makes it go up couple of MB.
- Do you keep local backups of your files? Kind of.
- Do you prefer simple or highly visual websites? I appreciate both, as soon as they don’t look generic.
- Do you stick to certain colours? Do you do that on purpose, or is it your subconscious? I am a huge Dieter Rams fan and I always try to follow his color combinations. Not successfully all the time though.
- Have you ever thought about quitting? Why? Making websites? No.
- Do you have many webmaster friends, or is it a solitary hobby? Nope. I am an hardware design engineer, so lots of electronics engineers around me.
- Do people in your real life know about your website? Some of them, yes.
- Do you update your website very often? How often is “very often”? My goal for 2026 is to at least post something every month. Not so often I guess. But I fine-tune the design almost weekly.
- And the overall design, do you change that much? Why or why not? All the time. Because I get an itch, if I have an idea to implement.
- Is your website more you-focused, hobby-focused, or outside world-focused? All of them I guess.
- Do you do web design professionally? Nope. Not officially a web designer.
- If not, would you like to? And if you’re comfortable answering, what do you do for work? I think I could. But I have my career in electronics engineering and I am happy with how things are currently. I am happy I could invest my free time on web design.
- Do you communicate with people by email very much? At work, yes. Privately, not as much as I do at work.
- Some people reject social media and use websites as a replacement. Do you keep social media outside of your website? That’s my goal too. I was very active in Twitter and stopped using that shithole, when Space Karen bought it. Only social media app I have in my smartphone is Mastodon.
- How about instant messengers? Do you use a mainstream one like Discord or Telegram? Or something like Matrix? Do you avoid them? I’m afraid I have to use WhatsApp, because it is the defacto in Germany. I wish my friends and family would use something else, so I could switch too.
- Do you listen to music while you work on websites? If so, what kinds of artists? Sometimes. But I listen to music all the time anyway.
- Do you keep everything you make on one website, or do you have more than one? Currently just one. Except the services I self-host.
- On a similar note, do you keep to one topic on your site, or many? Many. My goal for the next periods is to post about electronics.
- Do you present your real self, or at least try? Or do you construct a persona on purpose? I try. But I guess being behind a keyboard pushes you to construct a persona online. I hope I’m not doing it in a bad way though.
- Have you ever made a good friend thanks to your website? Nope. But life is long. Hopefully.
- Are you happy with the way HTML and CSS currently work? CSS came a long way and I think it’s trajectory is right. HTML works anyway. I don’t mind the ambiguities around it.
- What are practices that you think people should avoid? For the IndieWeb community, I believe people are already doing a good job. I try too. But for other circles I guess there are a lot of things to avoid, which I can’t list them all here. Stop using Substack is the first one came to my mind for example.
- What about under-utilised practices, or things you think people should do more? Aria labels, semantic HTML, POSSE. I am bad at it too.
- Do you use a lot of semantic HTML? Or are you guilty of generic structure? Try to.
- Do you consider different browsers? All the time. But I generally don’t like Chromium based ones. A guilty pleasure is Arc though. I hate how they handled it and how that company is building that abomination called Dia now. I wish they’d open-source Arc and maybe it could be de-googled.
- Speaking of, what’s your preferred browser? Convince your readers why they should use it. Firefox. But I am not happy about where it is going. So I don’t know. I like qutebrowser too, but it is very primitive in terms of adblocking at the moment. If you have a better recommendation, please tell me.
- And what OS are you on? All of them :) I hate Windows, but have to use at work. Personally I am on macOS, but I use Linux since I have my servers running on Ubuntu too. I occassionally install Arch on my machine to just see how things are going, but macOS is my choice
- Do you have a strong opinion on that, or do you just happen to use it? I use it simply because of the hardware. As an hardware engineer, I appreciate the effort and advanced techniques they put into it. Unfortunately Apple is also not my favourite company, but Mac hardware is the best out there.
- Are your websites mobile-friendly? Yes, I always design for desktop and mobile.
- What are your thoughts on autoplay? Does not bother me.
- What are your thoughts on webrings? Are you in any? I guess I am on retronaut webring, but I’m not sure. I will join others.
- Do you have any web shrines? What do you like to see in that sort of page? I don’t think I do.
- Are your websites “cliche”, in your opinion? Nope.
- What is your ideal website? Are you striving for that, or for something else? Minimal, but unique. Active, but not distracting. And yes, that is my goal.
- Are you an artist? Do you draw or design your own assets? I draw sometimes. Not as much as I used to do though. I also shoot analog and digital photographs and the hero images on top of the pages, as well as the video background in the index page are all my photos.
- What are your favourite resource sites? I don’t think I have a favourite one.
- Is there a habit you just can’t get away from no matter how hard you try? Yes, redesigning my navigation. I have yet to find my final navigation.
- What’s your biggest advice for a new webmaster? Don’t scare to publish your website. You can try to make it look on the go.
- Do you keep all your styling in CSS? Or do you hard-code some? I always use components to design my website and try to put styles on component level to prevent leakage and keep it organized.
- What do you think of frameset layouts? Not use them.
- How about table-based layouts? Tables are underrated. But for layouts, I guess we have better tools since years now. I designed my first website I mentioned above completely with tables thought. That was the case in the past.
- Do you subscribe to the ideas of “one-column”, “two-column” and “three-column” layouts? Do you use any of these? Yes. For my post pages I use two-columnd and the second column is for sidenotes.
- Do you spend longer on the HTML or the CSS? CSS definitely.
- Have you ever made a page with no CSS? It’s useful for your thoughts. I don’t think so.
- Do you ever find yourself making layouts with nothing to put on them? Or do you only make layouts when the need arises? I make them if I need them.
- Would you consider yourself a beginner? Or advanced? Somewhere in the middle? I am quite advanced in terms of programming on the web. But for design, I guess I am somewhere in between.
- Do you have a habit of looking at the source code of websites you visit? If I see something unique, of course.
- How did YOU learn how to make websites? I have seen a series that teaches you how to make a website on the local newspaper. Yes, on the printed newspaper.
- Do you ever force elements to do things they’re not supposed to? Yes, JavaScript is for that isn’t it?
- Thoughts on floating elements? I use them in my sidenotes. I also like dropcaps.
- When you’re sizing stuff, what do you use first? Do you use px, em, %, or something else? I almost never use em. I almost always try to use rem. But for some quick stuff I use px and % too. For
- Do you have a favourite font? I do. I use JetBrains Mono locally in my editor, I like Iosevka too. Lexend is a nice one to read. iA Writer series are also very good for reading. IBM Plex is one of my favourites. I like Berkeley Mono too, but not yet made the decision to buy it.
- Would you run a website with another person? How would that work? It could be fun, yeah.
- Do you surf the Web to find new personal websites very often? Always. I check Ye Olde Blogroll, powRSS, personalsit.es, Dead Simple Sites all the time.
- Do you bookmark other people’s websites? How would you feel knowing someone else bookmarked yours? Yes! That’s a good thing. You can see my bookmarks here. I would feel extremely happy, if I would see someone bookmarked my website. I guess Webmentions are going in a good direction in that matter.
- What do you want people to be most impressed with when they see your website? My hover previews at the moment. And the general aesthetics.
- Are you interested in technology outside of websites? Do you collect? Yes. I like electronics-related stuff. I like Casio watches. I like tools. I like keyboards.
- How often and for how long are you online? Puh. I work on computers all the time. I guess I am “online” for the whole day.
- When it comes to your website, who is your target audience? Technical people as well as bloggers. But anyone is welcome. Except fascists, racists, homophobes, transphobes, bigots and alike.
- Have you ever been interested in XHTML? I did! But it was a very short period.
- Do you program in general? Have you ever written a program for use with or on your website, not counting simple JavaScript? Yes. Frequently. I write scripts in Python occasionally at work and I am currently building my own headless CMS for this very website and the backend is in Go. For this website I wrote a backlinks checker in Rust last year. But that was solely for learning purposes and I ported it again to Typescript since it is more convenient for build step.
- Speaking of programs that help you make websites, what do you think of static site generators (SSGs)? Have you ever used one? Yes! I used Eleventy for my first iteration of kenan.fyi. I tried Next.js too, but that thing is not thought for blog sites. Then I’ve found Astro and stuck with it since then. I don’t plan to change it. I played with Hugo, Jekyll and couple of others, but Astro works in the way my brain works.
- Do you keep a hitcounter? Why or why not? I hava a lightweight analytics I self-host and does not set any cookies for the sole reason of me being curious. I don’t do anything with that statistics. In fact I nuked the service at least 10 times already because I wanted to try something else. For now, it’s active, but I sometimes think about disabling it completely.
- Do you frequent forums? Which ones? Not that much to be honest. Except Reddit and Stackoverflow. Maybe sometimes Obsidian forums too. But I prefer them to Discord any day.
- Do you write your page content directly into the editor, or do you prepare it elsewhere, like a text document or a Word document? Yes, in the editor. It’s all Markdown with MDX additions. When I’m done with my headless CMS, I will switch to that though.
- Do you think you appear cool to others? A more accurate answer now: do other people ever say you’re cool? They do. But I don’t think I am.
- Are you embarrassed of your old work? Have you ever deleted everything out of shame? Not out of shame, but out of not giving a shit. This is my playground. I destroy and build it from scratch if I want. I have no fears of it.
- Would you close down your website if you couldn’t update it, or would you leave an archive? No. It will stay online as soon as I’m alive.
- Do you reveal a lot about yourself on your website? Or are you more secretive? Not so much.
- Are you willing to reveal who your best online friend is, and/or if they have a website? I have none at the moment.
- And do you optimise the images on your website? Yes. Astro does that. Sometimes I took them out from the optimization pipeline though.
- We’re out of time! How do you feel after answering 100 questions? …other than exhausted. That was fun! I mean, who wouldn’t like a good questionnaire?
pre and code for ASCII stuff.npm create astro@latest.translateX, translateY I use % only for example.