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berlian wathing how sus box definitely works perfectly fine
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It's alive!!!

By Berlkot |

At the time of writing this, I'm bouncing between a family celebration table and my computer. Expected that, considering that I'm publishing this project near the end of the year.

The background

Since 2022, social media for me hasn't been a very stable place to be, especially considering the place where I live (say hi to mother russia). Any platform that exists can be easily cut off by a third party. So I desperately needed a place that could be my main platform to which I could link users reliably.

First steps

I've already tried building something like that in 2023. It was a small test site on the domain keychaincat.com (domain currently inactive) written in python with some memez. The stack was Nginx, Flask and Sass for css if you're interested. Surprisingly, you don't need much for a working website.

Next, I've tried to build something with "tools which are widely used in web space". Firstly, JS itself. Haha what a funny language to say the least. The fact that I can add a string and a number together without a conversion step is wild. And there are dozens of ways you can sort an array! Somehow, in this language, you can write something meaningful.

But at some point I was told that Next.js is a pain in the ass to deploy on a self-hosted server (probably isn't true already). So I've ported the project to Remix (which is now a react-router). Later, I ditched React completely in favor of Svelte.

The tech

Right now, the website from top to bottom works on Sveltekit. This framework definitely lacks in the feature department, but it is absolutely possible to cope with. Considering the fact that templates work like JavaScript, feel like JavaScript and smell like JavaScript — absolute heaven for me.

I'm also using some TypeScript on top. Not like it helps a lot. Still, its type system is not as feature-rich as in (for example) Python. Also, "Auto Tying" not as good as in compiled languages.

Server

This whole colorful unicorn runs behind Nginx (I'm ain't changing my trusted tool here, oki?) on a Debian server. Not the first time I am tinkering with it, nor the last. Probably should make some easy™ sh script to set up my website.

The future

There are a lot of things still needed to be done before saying that this project is fully finished. Here is a small list of things I still have to do at some point in the future:

  • localization
  • sitemap & rss
  • more gallery sorting options
  • projects page
  • comic reader
  • more markdown styling options
  • rework of admin panel
  • auto update from my github
  • proper error logging

Oh my govd why it is so huge...

The Out

I'm currently in the process of actually getting used to writing huge text articles in English. Some helpful notes about my grammar mistakes won’t hurt. :D

Anyway, huge thanks for reading and a Happy New Year for ya!!! ♥