---

title: Website Design 2.0 Changelog
author: Thomas Wilson
date: 2021-02-12
draft: false
tags:
  - redesign
  - technical
slug: "2021-02-12-website-design-2-0-changelog"
---

I've redesigned the blog. This post just covers the technical whats and hows of it all.

## What's changed ?

- **New Dark theme colours**: Look around. Look at this dark purply-grey. Look at the same brand-orange, and the deliciously crisp white text. New colours!
- **100% More Portfolio**: I completely revamped the homepage so that it actually showcases my writing and my work. The content isn't hidden behind anything anymore.
- **50% Less Bio**: I've shortened bios and text on the home page, they made the site feel a lot more static and like a placeholder site than I wanted.
- **Blog Series Highlight**: I've highlighted, and made accessible, certain series on my blog (like my "Things Week I Learned" series). You can now filter for just these posts on the blog page.
- **Personal Brand**: The site sizzles a little bit more with personal brand and little "moments" in the UI. It's a "website experience". This includes little self-aware UI labels which seem very post-modernist and bring me joy.
- **Tags**: I added tags to blog posts. They don't do anything right now though lol.

## Yeah but how?

I bloody love talking about workflows and processes. By brevity here is a mercy and a kindness:

- **Design**: Any and all visual design was done in [Figma](https://www.figma.com/about/). I bloody love Figma.
- **Code**: This site was, and remains, a static site built with [Gatsby](https://www.gatsbyjs.org/) (and therefore on [React](https://reactjs.org/) and [GraphQL](https://graphql.org/))
- **Deployment**: [Netlify](https://www.netlify.com/), and they do a _stunning_ job.
- **Writing**: Everything is Markdown ([markdown is cool](https://thomaswilson.xyz/blog/2021-01-10-an-ode-to-plaintext-notes)). I write with [iA Writer](https://ia.net/writer) for longer pieces (like this) and [Obsidian](https://ia.net/writer) for research and emergent writing.
