For my website I wanted something based on those principles:

• offline first: I should be able to view and work on it without having an internet connection
• statically generated from plain HTML+CSS, no Javascript, no cookies. no databases or PHP servers needed
• no embedded surveillance capitalism, this means no SEO, no embedded Youtube or Google Fonts
• pixelperfect graphics should remain pixelperfect
• images and videos compressed as much as possible improve loading speed, artifacts can be embraced as an aesthetic trait

This site is generated by a script counting less than 150 lines of code. It is also a proof that shell scripting, although not very efficient, can be a viable way for generating small to medium websites. For frequently edited platforms like a wiki or a memex a more performant language would have been a better fit, but for editing a few pages once in a while a fish shell script is just enough.

All the images are optimized with optipng and jpegoptim, and resized to the section width (with full size versions on click). Videos are compressed to something like 500kb/s at HD resolution. About 70 lines of CSS are used for styling. Links don't open in a new tab by default, leaving the choice to the reader.

You can check out the site generator source code here.

2022 note: It's funny how nowaday websites are ditched for short link lists (linktrees) that then could grow so much to become a kind of index website like my own homepage.

Further readings:

• Guide to Brutalist Web Design
• This Page is Designed To Last
• Web Design - The First 100 Years
• How to build a lowtech website
• Building a Website using Pandoc, Markdown and Static HTML