17 versions of this website
July 2026 · one sitting · one winner
The story
In July 2026 I looked at my homepage and admitted it was dated. It had a starfield. It had a fake terminal. It had a chatbot, because at some point every personal site got a chatbot. All of it felt like a snapshot of what I thought was cool several years ago, which is the natural fate of every personal website.
The normal move is to pick one new direction, build it, and ship it. I could not pick. So instead of choosing a design, I built all of them. Seventeen complete homepage concepts, in one sitting. Each one is a real page with my actual content, not a mockup. There is a fake operating system with draggable windows. There is a broadsheet newspaper. There is a synthwave sunset with a perspective grid and a high score table. There is a version of my life written as a CHANGELOG.md.
Then I lined them all up and picked the plainest one. Version 12. Black text on a white background, a few 1px rules, decent spacing. That is the site you are on right now.
You can flip through all 17 in one continuous scroll, or jump to any single version from the list below. Every one still works.
All 17 versions
- v1Terminal brutalisttmux session, phosphor green, blinking cursors
- v2Swiss editorialwhite specimen sheet, huge type, one red accent
- v3Bento griddark rounded cards, stat tiles, glow on hover
- v4Builder changeloglife as a CHANGELOG.md
- v5One continuous lineTracer homage, a single stroke threads the page
- v6justinOSfake desktop, windows, dock, menu bar clock
- v7The Torre Timesbroadsheet front page on cream paper
- v8Quiet proseone narrow column, typography only
- v9Aurora herodrifting gradients, glass cards, stats marquee
- v10Mission controlops dashboard, KPI cards, status pills
- v11Retro-futuresynthwave sunset, perspective grid, high scores
- v12Black and whiteno frills, sharp 1px rules; the winner
- v13Classic MacintoshSystem 7 windows, pinstripe title bars
- v14Neon receiptv12's skeleton in v11's skin
- v15Field guidedark blueprint, wireframe spheres, step cards
- v16Analog mission controlTVA dossier, telemetry meters
- v17Modern steampunkbrass gears, colored filigree
Or flip through all 17 back to back.
The lesson
I spent the most time on the loudest versions. The synthwave grid took real effort. The fake operating system has a working dock and a menu bar clock. And after all of that, the design that won was black text on white with good spacing. I keep turning that over. The flashy versions were fun to build and tiring to read; the plain one gets out of the way and lets the words do the work. There is probably something to that, and it probably applies to more than websites.
All 17 versions live in the repo if you want to see how any of them are put together.