— How the sausage is made
Colophon
How this site is built, what it runs on, and the decisions behind it.
This site is a deliberate thing. Built to last, not to impress — though ideally both.
The stack
Built with Eleventy — a static site generator that gets out of your way and lets you write HTML like you mean it. No framework. No client-side JavaScript framework. Just the platform.
Styles are vanilla CSS, structured around cascade layers and design tokens. No preprocessor, no utility framework. The constraint is intentional — if you can’t do it in CSS, it probably doesn’t need doing.
The typefaces are Space Grotesk for headings, IBM Plex Sans for body text, and IBM Plex Mono for code. Served via Google Fonts.
Hosted on Netlify. Source on GitHub.
There are no cookies, no tracking, and no ads. Ever.
The design
The visual design is mine. It went through several iterations before settling into something I’m happy with — which mostly means something I’ll still be happy with in two years.
Colour palette is earthy and warm. Dark mode is the default because screens at night are aggressive enough already.
The writing
Everything here is written by me, in my own voice, without a content strategy document in sight. Some of it takes a long time. Some of it is short and unfinished by design.
The name
gbbns.co is my surname, abbreviated. It’s what happens when you’ve been using the internet long enough to find all the good domains gone.
Accessibility
Accessibility is a baseline here, not a feature. The site is built with semantic HTML, proper heading hierarchy, sufficient colour contrast, and keyboard navigability throughout. If you find something that doesn’t work for you, I want to know — get in touch.
Version history
Every iteration of this site has served a purpose and served it well.