Hi, I'm @arazgholami, Programmer, Blogger and Explorer.I create things and make them better. I'm a repairer, not replacer.I love to transform complex things to simple things. A Fresh Start, A Timeless Redesign === Story of redesigning my persoanl website --- Similar to my previous miracle of performance (/how-installing-linux-changed-my-life), I recently felt a new wave of energy blowing into my brain. Where Did It Come From? This time, it all started with a new chair. My biggest problem—sitting behind the desk with constant back pain—was finally gone. That small fix gave me enough energy to clean my laptop, then the kitchen, then the whole house, and eventually, to refresh my website. If you’re struggling with something similar, try this: identify the first thing that annoys you, depresses you, or makes you feel unsuccessful. If you can’t fix that one, move on to the next thing. The point is to break the chain of negativity. The tricky part with this dopamine rush is that if you stop even for one day, you risk losing it forever. Trust me, it took me five years to get it back. From Cleaning to Creating After cleaning my house, kitchen, and drawers, I felt a sense of clarity in my mind. Using that energy, I finally started to reimagine my personal website—from zero to one hundred. Exactly 20 years after that 12-year-old boy opened his first blog (/in-search-of-a-place-to-write), I completed the translation of everything I had written so far. And right now, I’m writing this post to publish the whole collection on the very same day and at the very same hour. Minimalism at the Core I built this website with an extreme obsession for minimalism. There isn’t a single extra character in the code. You can check it yourself (Right-click > View Source). Progress in life often comes not from adding more, but from removing what isn’t needed. I reimagined the whole thing from the beginning: Who am I writing for? What do I want to share? Every small detail here has a thought behind it. Most importantly, I wanted my control back. Yeah, fuck WordPress. I built my own CMS from scratch so I could regain control over every bit of this website. As Dieter Rams said, “Good design is as little design as possible.” I designed it to be a single column, because you only get a minimum slice of attention from visitors who randomly land here. That attention is precious, so it has to be used as wisely as possible. Your view-source should be readable even by someone who doesn’t know HTML. No JavaScript And one more important thing: no fucking JavaScript. I hate that shit. Why Emojis Instead of Icons? I don’t want any additional requests to load icons. They’re cool and unique to each user’s device or browser, making them feel more familiar. Why force it to look the same for everyone? Behind the CMS I couldn’t shake the image of Zuck using pure HTML in his early blog. That’s what I call control. So, in my CMS, there’s no WYSIWYG editor—just a simple textarea where I write pure HTML as the content. A screenshot from the Social Network movie Wrapping Up That’s it for now. I’m exhausted today after translating such a huge amount of content. I’ll write more soon. Tuesday 08:30 AM, 16 September 2025 Share: https://arazgholami.com/a-timeless-redesign-a-fresh-start