Write Once, Link Anywhere

HTML endures. Most browsers can be pointed at a 30-year old HTML document and render it just fine. The declarative markup is resilient and extendable.

And yet, here I am, rebuilding my Markdown files (some of which were originally HTML files) back into HTML. On every build of my site! To get some matching chrome, I guess? What a waste. And what a loss! The 2006 HTML representation of my writing had fingerprints of the era. Now it’s aesthetic is time-shifted where the style and the substance don’t work in harmony.

So I’m considering a radical idea. I just author HTML files. They have inline CSS. God help me if I need JavaScript on every page. Pages will diverge over time. This is a feature.

When I author a new page, I do a one time conversion from plaintext into HTML. Then it’s done. Locked in time. Linkable forever.

I never have to bulk update, because I don’t care about pages looking uniform. I’m just making documents. Not a uniform system of documents. My website can be like the rest of the internet. Links are what make the web go round.

I will have one Makefile (honestly, probably a Rakefile) that reads html documents and maps the information into a feed, a sitemap, and maybe a curated index page. Just the right amount of automation that requires minimal complexity.

I haven’t committed to this yet. But I’m considering it.