Behind the Scenes

How this website works

Everything you see on this page — and on the home page you just came from — and on most of the pages on this site — is plain HTML, CSS, and a small amount of JavaScript. There is no server, no database, and no build step behind these pages.

GitHub

The source code — every .html file, image, and stylesheet — lives in a public repository on GitHub. GitHub is a platform for storing and versioning code. Every change I make is tracked as a commit, so there is a full history of how the site has evolved.

GitHub Pages

GitHub offers a free hosting service called GitHub Pages. When I push a change to the repository, GitHub automatically publishes the updated files to miketrounce.github.io. That is how you are reading this page right now — your browser fetched the HTML directly from GitHub's servers.

No build, no framework

Unlike many modern websites, these pages are not generated by a framework or compiled from source. They are hand-written HTML files served exactly as they are. This keeps things simple, fast, and free.