A Wee Change of Scenery
Hello again, ya bunch of wankers!
Well, well, well. Look who’s back, and with a fresh coat of paint anaw!
You’ll no doubt be sitting there thinking, “What the fuck has happened here? What in God’s name is this creation?”
Well, I’ve been messing about with old-school website designs for a while now. You know, the kind of sites we used to visit back in the late 90s and early 2000s, before everything started looking like it was built from the same boring template.
And I thought, fuck it, why not give RuggedScot a bit of that treatment?
So I’ve pretty much ripped the whole bloody place apart and started again.
If you’re new here, welcome to my wee corner of the internet. Mind and wipe yer feet.
The old design wasn’t terrible, but it never quite felt like me. It did the job, sure, but there was something missing. A bit of personality, a bit of character, a bit of that Scottish rough-around-the-edges charm.
I wanted something colourful, a bit chaotic, and full of the kind of nonsense that made the old internet such a brilliant place to waste your time.
And here we fucking are.
Welcome to the new RuggedScot!
Less Modern Bollocks, More Character
I’m getting a bit fed up with websites that all look the same.
You know the ones. Perfectly rounded corners, enormous empty spaces, fancy gradients and everything looking like it came out of the same template.
Nothing wrong with that if it’s your thing, but it’s not mine.
So I’ve gone in a completely different direction.
There’s now a big illustrated Scottish header, bright colourful navigation buttons, rough borders that look like they’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards, and enough retro nonsense to make you wonder what year it actually is.
I’ve also brought back some of that old personal website feeling. The kind where every little corner had something going on, rather than acres of empty space and a massive button telling you to “Get Started”.
Get started with what, ya rocket?
Is it everyone’s cup of tea? Probably not.
Do I give a fuck? Not particularly.
A Bit of the Old Internet
One thing I’ve always loved is the internet from years ago.
Back when websites were a bit weird, people had guestbooks, silly buttons, flashing graphics and little corners of the web that actually felt personal.
You’d stumble across somebody’s homepage, have a wee nosey around, maybe sign their guestbook, and before you knew it you’d wasted half the night clicking through random websites.
Brilliant times.
I’m not trying to recreate 1998 exactly, but I wanted to bring some of that feeling back.
You’ll notice little retro touches dotted around the site, including the Friends section in the sidebar, where I’ve added buttons linking to other wee corners of the internet.
It reminds me of when people actually linked to websites because they liked them, rather than worrying about algorithms, engagement and all that pish.
Sometimes I miss that version of the internet.
So I thought I’d bring a wee bit of it back.
The Articles Are Still the Same
Don’t worry, I’m not suddenly turning RuggedScot into some fancy online magazine.
It’s still me writing about Scotland, growing up in the 80s and 90s, Scottish food, places I’ve visited and whatever else pops into my head.
There’ll still be stories about square sausage, Irn-Bru, childhood memories and whatever random Scottish nonsense I feel like writing about that day.
The writing isn’t getting polished into something that sounds like it was written by a marketing department.
There’ll still be the odd swear word, probably a few spelling mistakes and plenty of rambling.
That’s the whole point.
This is a personal website, not the fucking BBC.
Built with Astro, Hosted on Cloudflare
A wee change behind the scenes as well.
RuggedScot is still built using Astro, which is actually a cracking bit of kit for a site like this. No massive complicated setup, just good old-fashioned pages, Markdown articles and a bit of CSS to make everything look the way I want.
I’ve also moved the site away from my VPS and over to Cloudflare Pages.
Not because I’m a cheap bastard. Well, maybe a wee bit.
Nah, seriously, it just made sense. I don’t need an entire server sitting there doing bugger all just to serve a few articles about square sausage and the good old days.
Cloudflare handles the hosting, Astro handles the website, and I can spend more time writing absolute shite instead of faffing about with server updates.
Sometimes keeping things simple is the best way forward.
Still a Work in Progress
There’ll probably be a few things that need fixing as I settle into the new design.
A border might look a bit wonky, an image might need adjusting, or I might decide tomorrow that something looks absolutely shite and change it again.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
That’s the beauty of having your own website.
You can do whatever the hell you want with it. No bosses, no committees, nobody telling you that your website needs more white space or a fucking mission statement.
Anyway, have a wee look around and see what you think.
Same RuggedScot. Same Scottish nonsense.
Just wearing a different jacket.
Catch ye in the next one.