Minimal Personal Website

A minimal, accessible personal website with landing page and writing section, designed for sharing writings and research results. Built with pure HTML/CSS and optimized for speed, accessibility, and AI crawlability.

Features

• Landing page with centerpiece video - Clean entry point with navigation to all sections
• Minimal HTML style - Fast loading with minimal dependencies
• Tufte-style footnotes - Elegant sidenotes that become toggleable on mobile
• LaTeX math support - Beautiful mathematical notation via KaTeX
• Inline HTML embedding - Support for interactive content and visualizations
• AI-accessible - Follows principles from gwern.net/llm-writing for maximum crawlability
• Organized content structure - Logical hierarchy with all content under pages/

Structure

website/
├── index.html                # Landing page with video centerpiece
├── assets/                   # Static assets
│   ├── css/
│   │   └── style.css        # Minimal stylesheet
│   ├── images/
│   │   └── favicon.png      # Favicon
│   └── media/
│       └── waves.mov        # Landing page video
├── pages/                   # All user-facing content
│   ├── about.html          # About page
│   ├── writing.html        # Writing listing page
│   ├── talks.html          # Talks and presentations
│   └── posts/              # Individual writing posts
│       ├── example-post.html
│       └── getting-started.html
├── feeds/                  # Syndication
│   └── rss.xml            # RSS feed
├── config/                 # Configuration files
│   ├── _config.yml         # GitHub Pages configuration
│   ├── robots.txt          # Crawler instructions
│   └── sitemap.xml         # Sitemap for search engines
└── README.md              # This file

Setup for GitHub Pages

1. Create a new repository on GitHub
2. Upload these files to the repository
3. Go to Settings → Pages
4. Set source to "Deploy from a branch"
5. Select "main" branch and "/ (root)" folder
6. Your site will be available at https://yourusername.github.io/repositoryname

Customization

Update Personal Information

Replace placeholders in all files:

• Your Name → Your actual name
• yourusername → Your GitHub username
• website → Your repository name (if different)

Adding New Posts

1. Create a new HTML file in the pages/posts/ directory
2. Copy the structure from pages/posts/example-post.html
3. Add the post entry to pages/writing.html
4. Update config/rss.xml and config/sitemap.xml

Customizing the Landing Page

• Replace assets/media/waves.mov with your own video
• Update assets/images/favicon.png with your favicon
• Modify navigation links in index.html as needed

Styling

The CSS in assets/css/style.css is intentionally minimal. Key features:

• Landing page with centered video and navigation
• Responsive sidenotes that collapse on mobile
• KaTeX math styling
• Clean typography with Palatino font
• Mobile-first responsive design

Design Philosophy

This writing site prioritizes:

• Content over complexity
• Accessibility for all users and AI systems
• Fast loading times
• No build system dependencies
• Semantic HTML structure
• Long-term maintainability

Inspired by Dan Luu, Gwern, and other minimal web design practitioners.