About This Website
It takes a wise man to recognize a wise man.
Welcome to my website. This site is a personal space for my thoughts, projects, and explorations. I built it to learn and share my interests. In the sections below, I have explained how this website is built and served on the internet. If you want to replicate my workflow for your personal or hobby website or blog, please reach out to me at , and I will be happy to guide you in detail.
Technical Details (Colophon)
This website is built with Quarto, which converts plain text files (written in Markdown) into clean, fast-loading HTML pages. The site is static, meaning the pages are pre-built and served directly to visitors without needing a database or complex server-side software. This approach keeps the site lightweight, secure, and easy to maintain.
Generation & Deployment
Build Process: I write everything in Markdown, and Quarto compiles it into HTML. This is similar to exporting a document—once generated, the files don’t change unless I rebuild them.
Version Control: The entire website source code is stored in a private GitHub repository so I can track changes, roll back revisions, and sync across devices.
Hosting: The compiled HTML files for the main site are deployed to a free Google Cloud Platform VM running Debian Bookworm (2 vCPUs, 1 GB RAM).
- Nginx serves the static files efficiently.
- Let’s Encrypt provides automatic SSL/TLS certificates for secure HTTPS connections.
- Deployment is done using
rsync, which copies only changed files to the server.
Subdomains
All subdomain sites follow the same content philosophy but are hosted differently:
- docs.rohitfarmer.com
- cooklikeadad.rohitfarmer.com
- cardsandstories.rohitfarmer.com
- journal.rohitfarmer.com
These sites are also static, but instead of being deployed to my cloud server, they are hosted on GitHub Pages, which serves the files directly from a GitHub branch.
- The
docswebsite is built using MkDocs andcooklikeadadandcardsandstoriesare built with Quarto, just like the main site. journalis generated using DriftNotes, my own static site journaling workflow, and then published automatically via GitHub Pages.
GitHub Pages acts like a simple file server for static websites, making hosting easy and reliable.
Editing Workflow
All pages and posts are edited using Positron on macOS or Linux. Since everything is plain text, the workflow is fast and portable—no proprietary software or database is required. Once edits are made, I rebuild the site locally and push updates to GitHub or deploy them to the server.
Commenting
On my main website and the docs section, comments are implemented using Giscus. I have also provided several alternative ways to contact me at the bottom of each page if you prefer to share your thoughts outside the comment system.
Tracking
I do not use any analytics or tools that explicitly track personally identifiable information. For general website statistics, I use Umami, which provides privacy-focused, non-identifiable analytics.
Bible Verse
Some pages display a Bible verse at the bottom, selected at random from dailyverses.net. For clarity, this is not intended as preaching or persuasion. I will not bring up Christianity in conversation unless you express interest. I am, however, a Christian, and I do write about faith and religion from time to time.
AI Usage Disclosure
I use large language models to help proofread and edit my writing, especially longer pieces. Whenever I do so, I include a disclaimer at the beginning of the post. I treat this in a similar spirit to a content notice, since I understand that some readers prefer not to engage with material that has been generated or edited with AI assistance. If you are sensitive to this, please take note.
That said, you are warmly invited to read the article. My use of AI is limited to proofreading and editing drafts of work that I have already written. I rarely ask an AI system to generate an entire article, and when I do use it, the process involves substantial input, revisions, and corrections from me.
I share this notice so readers can make an informed choice. The decision to use these tools is a personal one, and I prefer not to debate or justify it. I kindly ask that you respect this boundary and refrain from contacting me to object to my use of AI, as I will not be responding to such messages.