Lessons From Almost 30 Years of Site-Building Activities
When I was in school I built a site in Geocities. Many other people had done the same, but they were mostly (almost always) older than me and more experienced than me. Some of them did some very witty things and had important things to share online, not the ramblings of an adolescent.
My personal site began around 2001 (25 years ago) and Techrights is turning 20 in November. Funnily enough, the site back in 2006 was a lot heavier and more complicated than it is right now in 2026. So we've moved "in reverse" bloat-wise. We're somewhere "on par" with Geocities bloat (before it was ruined by floating ads and Yahoo! took over).
The lesson here is one that we discussed in length (in IRC) yesterday. The aim should be to simplify, not to complicate, and to make things concise and light, not "bigger" (which on the Web almost always means slower). The reason we've managed to write so much this year (about 6,000 pages in the sister site in 6 month) is that we can focus on what matters - the lawfare aside - and tinker with words (in a simple text editor) instead of code and 'webapps'.
As our front page puts it, quoting Antoine de Saint-Exupery: "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
We still strive to become faster and lighter. █