Hello World (Again)

No hello world jokes. Well, just the one.

If you’ve been here before — which seems unlikely given how long the old site sat untouched — this looks a bit different. If you’re new, welcome. Either way, here’s a quick rundown of what this is and what I plan to do with it.

The rebuilt joshcox.co.uk homepage

Why the rebuild

I’ve been building things on the web since 2016, mostly for clients through Prystine — WordPress, performance, the usual. The old site was a WordPress install I’d been putting off updating for longer than I care to admit.

I’d been wanting to try Astro for a while. The pitch is simple: most sites don’t need as much JavaScript as we typically ship. Static by default, hydrate only what you need. For a personal site that’s mostly content, it’s a natural fit. The build is clean, it’s fast, and it forced me to actually think about what I wanted the site to be rather than just porting the old one across.

The design ended up somewhere I’m genuinely happy with: clean, quick, and unapologetically writing-first. A big heading, a strip of photos, then the words. It’s got a proper dark mode too, which the old site absolutely did not.

What I’m working on

Most of my time goes into client work at Prystine. Outside of that, a few things are in progress:

  • Lifting Times — an Olympic weightlifting magazine I’ve been running since around when I started this whole web thing. Still going.
  • Quotify — a dynamic pricing and quote tool for builders and tradespeople.
  • Plugin Risk Score — a quick way to assess the risk level of a WordPress plugin. Handy if you’re managing a lot of sites.

This site is one of the side projects too. More soon.

What this blog will be

Mostly a place to think out loud. Some posts will be technical, some won’t. I’ll write when I’ve got something worth saying — no schedule, no filler. There’s a sign-up on the home page if you’d rather be nudged than remember to check back.

There are some older travel posts from a trip through Southeast Asia in 2017 here too. A by-gone era, kept as a record more than anything else.