WIP: Research Notes on Personal Website (Re)Design

The headings are the primary list, the examples underneath them should just clarify what I mean.

tl;dr: Current plan of action

• Buy the Andromeda theme and come up with color customizations
• Add a horizontal “rotating” About text with GSAP / Framer Motion / some other framework, and rewrite the copy accordingly
• Bring in the content collections I have

Things I don’t want or need

(so please don’t try to upsell me on them)

• CMS integration (git is good enough, thank you)
• SEO optimization (I’m the only Šimon Podhajský around and I’m not aiming for search conversions on my blog posts)
• Config-only content determination (I don’t intend to re-sell the template, so I don’t need to make it super easy to change the content)

Things I do like

The horizontal “rotating” About text

• https://ypradhan.com
• https://www.leya.law/

The scrolling animation (appearance from the bottom) + expansion of background within a single-page app

• https://themefisher.com/products/andromeda-astro

Other examples of engaging scrolling animation

• https://www.gavinoattes.com (but clearly reliant on a lot of content I don’t have)
• https://jacobleech.com

Cleanness

• https://astro-resume04.vercel.app/service/ (although the fact that it needs a loading animation might be a bit much?)
• https://astro.build/themes/details/flaco/ (the photo in the sentence is a fun touch, although maybe not replicable here)
• https://onepagelove.com/coding-bio (very clean, I like that there’s only one animation, and it’s subtle)
• https://www.ardakaracizmeli.com/ (very attainable)

Responsive layout (nothing fancy, it should just look fine on a phone)

No particular examples here - I haven’t encountered anything that looks / should look particularly fetching on a phone, it just shouldn’t break everything.

Heavily optional: Gradual underline of links

• e.g. https://quantum.cosmicthemes.com (+ TOC on blogposts inclusion is neat - on that note, the “animation snake” on this site is pretty great, too)

Miscellanea

Minimalism I’d be tempted with if I was building things myself

• https://astro.build/themes/details/zozo/
• https://astro.build/themes/details/prima-persona/
• https://astro.build/themes/details/astro-multiverse/ (great lightbox for photo gallery)

Brilliant & beautiful examples (but unattainable on my budget)

• !! https://www.andrejilderda.nl/ - very attainable
• https://olhauzhykova.com/
• https://nickstepuk.com/
• https://www.marchanslin.com/ (though a little too heavily reliant on slow/stable scroll speed)
• https://rafa.design/ - video integrating into the page + “people I’d like to meet”
• https://onepagelove.com/helena-zhang / https://www.helenazhang.com/ - color on hover
• https://starklysaid.com/ - copywriting expansion on hover
• https://charliepite.com - engaging use of video (although it’s really the idea that sells it)