DIARY · 2026-08-19
Why I rebuilt the site from scratch
Roberto Bonfa' · 2026-08-19
The previous version of this site was a full desktop inside the browser: windows that opened and moved, icons on a desk, a system bar with a clock. It took me months, and I liked it.
Then I started watching people open it.
The problem was not taste
Nobody told me it was ugly. They told me it was complicated. Someone arriving from a search saw an empty desk and had to work out, before reading anything at all, that the information lived inside windows you were supposed to open. Someone who wanted to know what EveryCent does was facing a fake operating system, not an answer.
The same people who found it hard preferred robertobonfa.me, which is a terminal: you type a command and text appears. Stranger, but clearer.
What I kept
- Pages read in full with JavaScript turned off. That used to be something I bolted on afterwards, now it is how the site is built.
- No downloaded fonts, no analytics, no third-party services.
- Everything runs on a machine at home, behind a tunnel.
What I threw away
The windows. The fake operating system. The idea that a portfolio has to prove how good you are before telling you what it does.
Now the front page scrolls through five screens, one for each thing worth looking at, and the rest lives in three pages. Whoever arrives knows where they are within a second.
I did not delete the desktop: it is archived. One day I will put it back online somewhere, just not where people go looking for answers.