Why's this site so basic...
... or really perhaps you should ask “why is every other site so bloated?”
Simplicity I spend all day building, maintaining, and supporting systems...
Id rather be doing cool things in my free time, so GitHub pages does all the backend delivery for me.
Robustness I subscribe to the This Page is Designed to Last philosophy.
This site is just plain HTML 4.01 with a touch of CSS so as long as you can reach the pages the site should always load.
Compatibility Hey I love Retro stuff, and I love making old things do new and interesting things that they were never designed for!
Want to read this site on your Vintage Macintosh or PC, feel free and any browser should be able to load it – no Javascript or complex frameworks here!
Freedom The old web was a melting pot of discovery and creativity, commercialisation of the web has killed this off and driven what remained to the fringes of the web.
Thankfully many of us want to bring back what made the “old” web great – check out SmolWeb, IndieWeb, NeoCities, Gemini Protocol, for some great projects!
Privacy No need to worry about trackers, bots, etc etc... stealing your personal data. This site collects none, and so do many others like this.
Why do I care what desktop you have or browser your using? If something doesn't work im sure someone will tell me eventually, and I might even fix it!
Of course there is also the Fediverse, with ActivityPub being probably the only “modern” web protocol thats engineered (at least philosophically) for the user first IMO.