Thinking About Simplification
This site’s a fun playground, but it’s evolved into a cluttered maze. Lately I’ve been wondering if it’s time to strip it down so I can focus on writing.
Since moving this blog over to Kirby a couple years ago, I've added a lot of features. Prior to the move, it was a simple site that had a blog, an RSS feed, and a handful of pages. But since then, I've been learning a bit of PHP and this site has morphed into a playground for my online antics. As a result, I've added:
- A notes system.
- A guestbook.
- A blogroll with an automatically generated OPML file that you can download.
- Custom post types that include blog, links, books, watches, and goodness knows what else.
- Stats for both my blog posts and my notes.
- A log of which watches I wear, along with stats.
Under the hood I've built a number of custom plugins, routes, hooks, configs etc. It's a lot, and I struggle to keep up with all the things I've done at this point.
By some people's measure, this isn't that complicated. But for a hobbyist like me, this is really bloody complex and as a result things are starting to creak. For example, I'm now having to reboot my server once a month or so, because something (I don't know what) is causing it to shit the bed.
It also means that I'm spending more time fiddling and less time writing, which is shame because it's what I love to do. If you look at the stats for this site, you will see a big drop off in 2025, which coincides with me starting to learn PHP and fiddling more.
What shall I do?
My first thought was to burn it all down, simplify the whole thing and re-write it in something like 11ty. No PHP, no complexity, just a simple blog, RSS feed and a few pages again.
But I love Kirby and honestly, I think I'd miss the CMS too much if I got rid of it. But then, on the other side of the coin, Kirby is what's causing me to fiddle so much.
- Do I go to an SSG like 11ty?
- Do I keep the CMS and go with something like Ghost?
- Do I just strip a load of the functionality out of this existing site?
I've been thinking about this for months, and I can't make up my mind. I know I want to get back to writing, but every time I login to this site, I end up getting side-tracked on something I want to fix, change, or improve. It's a slippery slope.
I’ve been using Obsidian for notes for a while now, and I love it. I could turn it into a slick SSG publishing machine…but I’m not sure if I want to open that can of worms, either.
Gah, I dunno. I think I'm going to spin up a simple 11ty site and see if I can build a decent workflow around Obsidian, then go from there...