Our New Website Is Online

Freshly Launched: Our New Website Is Online

There are projects you keep putting off – not because they aren't important, but precisely because they are. Our own website was one of those cases. Today the time has finally come: we're delighted to present our completely redesigned web presence. Faster, more elegant, more streamlined – and finally just the way we imagine a modern homepage should be.

Why It Was Time for Something New

Our previous site ran on WordPress for many years. For a long time it served its purpose, but lately the problems clearly outweighed the benefits. WordPress became increasingly slow and sluggish for us – both on the frontend for our visitors and on the backend in our daily work. Writing posts was anything but a pleasure: the built-in tools felt clunky, and the various page builders that were supposed to simplify things were often slow, confusing, and in places simply buggy.

On top of that came the constant maintenance. Hardly a week went by without pending updates – whether for WordPress itself or for one of the many plugins. And with every update there was the risk that something would suddenly stop working that had previously run flawlessly. These regular sources of friction cost time and nerves that are far better invested elsewhere.

A more fundamental issue came into play as well: WordPress is based on PHP and a dynamic architecture with a database running in the background. But for a site like ours, which is primarily about presenting content, that dynamic setup is hardly necessary. Instead, it saddles you with a rather old technology that brings additional complexity and repeatedly opens up new attack vectors. For what is essentially a static information offering, that is simply overkill.

The Cobbler's Children

A small, honest note about ourselves at this point: we have been working professionally in web design for many years. It's all the more curious, then, that of all things our own homepage benefited little from these skills for a long time – very much in keeping with the old saying about the cobbler's children having the worst shoes. That's why the new site is more than just a technical update for us: it's also a showcase, demonstrating what we can do when we consistently put our own expertise to work for ourselves.

The New Foundation: Zola as a Static Site Engine

For this fresh start, we're relying on Zola, a modern static site generator. Zola is written in the Rust programming language and comes as a single, self-contained application – without the usual tangle of dependencies and additional libraries. Features that elsewhere have to be set up laboriously, such as Sass compilation, syntax highlighting, or a built-in search, come with Zola right out of the box.

The principle behind it is wonderfully elegant: content is written in easily readable Markdown and, when the site is built, converted into finished HTML files. These static files are then simply served as they are – without database queries, without a server-side scripting language running in the background. This not only makes the site lightning fast but also considerably more robust and secure, because an entire class of typical vulnerabilities simply disappears. An average project is generated in less than a second.

Multilingual at Last – Across the Board

One new feature that's especially close to our hearts: our main site is now finally multilingual. While our documentation and the now-reintegrated blog were already available in several languages, the rest of our web presence is now following suit. This too we owe to Zola, which supports multilingual content out of the box and lets us maintain content cleanly and clearly in different languages – without any additional plugins or workarounds.

A New Design Based on the "Portio" Theme

Visually, the new site is built on a portfolio-oriented Zola theme that we've adapted to our needs. The result is a modern, clean, and noticeably more elegant appearance that looks great on every device – from desktop to smartphone. Clear categories for projects and skills make sure visitors find their way around quickly. All in all, the entire presence now feels noticeably more professional.

What Specifically Improves for You

The most important new features at a glance

Revamped portfolio: We now present our projects and services in a more structured and appealing way – so you can get a quick impression of what we can do for you.
Blog reintegrated: After our blog had temporarily been moved to its own domain, it is now once again a firm part of the main site. Everything in one place, no detours.
Faster loading times: Thanks to static delivery, the site loads noticeably quicker.
Better SEO ranking: Fast loading times and clean, lean HTML pay off directly in terms of visibility in search engines.
More pleasant writing: Instead of wrestling with cumbersome page builders, new posts are now comfortably created in Markdown format – allowing us to focus on what matters: good content.

Take a Look Around

We're very happy with the result and hope you like the new site as much as we do. Feel free to browse through our portfolio, take a look at the freshly integrated blog – and let us know what you think. There's plenty to discover, and this is only the beginning.

Table of contents