I wanted to try to write this website up while respecting the data privacy of visitors, and in line with the old-school utopian vision of the world wide web.
Software. The site runs on Ghost, open-source publishing software maintained by a non-profit foundation. The theme was written by me with Claude in HTML, CSS and Handlebars. Every page works with JavaScript switched off, if you prefer that.
Design. Bodyways brand design by Engy Elboreini. Brand development by Sophie Chatziapostolou of Earthly. Bristol photography by Paul Samuel White.
Type. Headings are set in Stinger, from Zetafonts in Florence, and Sofia Pro Condensed, by Olivier Gourvat of Mostardesign. Body text is Schibsted Grotesk. All three are licensed outright and served from this site's own address.
Hosting. The site is hosted by Magic Pages, a small Austrian company, on Hetzner servers in Germany that run on renewable electricity. The domain name is registered with Mythic Beasts in Cambridge.
What this site doesn't do. It sets no cookies for visitors — one appears only if you sign in to the email list or a membership, to keep you signed in. There are no third-party trackers, no advertising, no social-media embeds; every file a page needs comes from this address rather than from someone else's website. Visits are counted anonymously — no cookies, no fingerprinting, no identification — using Ghost's own analytics, which run on their servers in Germany.
Weight. I have tried to keep the website small and quick to load on rural broadband.
Addresses. Web addresses should be permanent, avoiding broken links. If a page ever has to move, the old address will redirect to the new one.
Following. I love RSS. The blog has a full-text feed at /rss/. You can also follow this site directly from Mastodon and other federated networks at [HANDLE].
Some Compromises. My host, Magic Pages, makes use of Cloudflare, a US content-delivery network. Although the site's content and data is in Germany, its delivery transits Cloudflare's machines.
Newsletter email is sent through Mailgun, a US email service — Ghost supports no other bulk sender.
Card payments, where they exist here, run through Stripe; no meaningfully independent alternative exists for taking card payments online.