Building Persepolis
A meta about this site
The idea of this personal site is that it's content-based; minimal, but also cool. In the way that words (carefully selected and laid out) are cool.
less is more!
Inspirations
The name
Persepolis calls to mind classical antiquity. Something remotely foreign. Juxtaposing technology with antiquity, reminding us of the vast expanses of knowledge and un-knowledge, the wilderness and unknown still out there.
Ever heard those sci-fi stories where explorers get themselves in a bit of a pickle, because they find technology older than themselves, or secrets they don't understand? That's what Persepolis is about - this thrill of finding, discovery, clicking links, figuring out the site is more than just a site, exploring bold new opportunities, being inspired, and returning to your own world.
Becoming wiser, encountering the unknown, learning more about the unknown, about yourself. It's a grand adventure, and I'm excited to share it with you.
The experience
Persepolis is a Next.js app that lets you write your entire website in Markdown.
It's actually quite cool -- eventually we'll be able to write our entire site in Markdown, like (this)
The hard part is rendering -- getting the CSS quite right. I like this one for now - simple, elegant, using just the defaults. I played with a lot of fonts, but for some reason I like this one the best. (if you have any font picking tips, let me know!)
The content
Since it's a personal site, I'm going to try to give it more texture than you'd normally see on the internet. My inspiration is to try to create something alive - dynamic, something you can push and pull and interact with.
The first step - adding lots of content, and then ways to relate to that content.
I'm going to add my favorite books and movies, photos of places I've been, photos of places I haven't been, and more. Long monologues on technology (crypto? space? bio design? and more), which I hope people will respond to.
Roadmap
As you can see, checkboxes don't work!
- [ ] Implement custom styling
- [ ] Add syntax highlighting for code blocks
- [ ] Create a table of contents component
- [ ] Optimize images for faster loading
- [ ] Add dark mode support