This Website

26 Aug 20—Ongoing

This website is a static site generated with Jekyll, hosted on Netlify, aiming to be as easy, lightweight, and cheap as possible. It is open-source and available on GitHub.

I enjoy having full control over the design and functionality of my website, and being able to host it for free. Although web development is not my main focus, I find it a fun and rewarding hobby. I am always looking for ways to improve the site, so if you have any feedback or suggestions, please let me know!

Features

Code

I include a lot of code snippets in my posts, so it’s pretty important they are easy and clear.

/easy/path/to/code.ml

let demo features =
  features
  |> List.append ["Syntax highlighting in code blocks"]
  |> List.append ["Nice directory hint, and a copy button on mouse hover"]

Images

I’ll also have a bunch of images. Instead of making sure they’re all optimised before-hand, I let Jekyll and Netlify do it fore me with a custom image tag:

For example, the following code in a post or project markdown file:

_projects/this-website.md

{% include img.html src="goldie.jpg" %}
*Pretty neat right?*

will automatically expand to the following HTML:

<picture class=""><img 
      class="" 
      loading="lazy" 
      decoding="async"
      
      alt="" 
      src="https://www.tbat.me/.netlify/images?url=/assets/images/projects/this-website/goldie.jpg&fm=webp&q=75&w=512" 
      sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px"
      width="512"
      height="480"
    /></picture>

<p><em>Pretty neat right?</em></p>

Pretty neat right?

Maths

Every other most might include the odd equation, so I include MathJax on any page that has the {% include math.html %} tag, and I can write LaTeX in my markdown files inline with a double dollar sign.

\[x = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}\]

This is all just a handy way to include MathJax on pages that need it, without having to load the library on every page of the site.

Design over the years

The website is always a work in progress, and changes to the design are often driven by my own tastes changing. When I started this site, I really liked monokai and serif fonts, but looking back, it gave off a bit of an ameteurish vibe. I gradually moved to a purple theme with a more modern font, but also kept to the rounded card-style layout. Eventually I fell back into a darker theme and dropped the round borders which I feel is a much more clean, modern design. Who knows, I’l probably going to change it again down the line, but for now, here is a nice snapshot of the design evolution.

November 2023

August 2024

October 2025

April 2026