Comment by wonger_

Here's some of my tips for a handwritten HTML site, since the author wished more tips existed:

- consider using an HTML boilerplate template like this one if you don't know where to start: https://www.matuzo.at/blog/html-boilerplate/

- consider using a CSS template, or a CSS reset, if you don't know where to start with styling. Pico CSS is a good drop-in: https://picocss.com/. Frontend devs always blog about their CSS resets, like this one: https://piccalil.li/blog/a-more-modern-css-reset/. But if you're someone inclined to write their own HTML, then you'll probably also want to write your own CSS. This takes time to learn. Especially learning how to design the page without looking crappy

- I copy my last page as a template whenever writing a new page

- I don't worry about code duplication. If I need to refactor duplicated content, I use search and replace across files in vim (like https://nithinbekal.com/posts/vim-search-replace/). Hopefully your editor/IDE has something similar, and hopefully you're comfortable with regexes

- markdown + pandoc + scripting is a common solution. Technically it's not handwriting HTML at this point -- it's hacking together your own static site generator instead of using an existing framework -- but no biggie

- frontend people have made a lot of live reload tools over time. Here's a couple: https://nitoyon.github.io/livereloadx/ and https://github.com/tapio/live-server. Personally, I've cobbled together something with entr/caddy/websockets/userscripts. I've had problems with `python -m http.server` freezing up occasionally, but YMMV

- About RSS: you can generate your own feed if you already started your own generator script. Personally, I let this tool generate a feed for me in a GitHub Action: https://feed-me-up-scotty.vincenttunru.com/, but the feed quality is meh

- Expect to do a lot of fiddling. You'll reinvent things. You'll lack common features for a while. Embrace this as minimalism. You'll begin to appreciate the tasks that frameworks automate (image optimization, compression, meta tags, validation, etc)

- You'll face growing pains after you cross certain thresholds of page counts. Personally, I'd rather be grug-brained and edit more HTML than figure out some new framework. This is fine for a personal website with a straightforward structure