Refactor to Digital Garden 2025

Refactor to Digital Garden 2025

Overview - 2025-05-12

Subject: updating rufuspollock.com

Question: what do i want my website to be? How do I do that? What do I start with?

Answer: i want a site that can live over the long-term as a home for my thinking and writing that is of the quality of gwern.net or similar. It is, in a perfect world, combination landing page, blog and digital garden. Most important is the digital garden. This is where i want to accumulate knowledge and insight.

  • I want this to last years, maybe decades which means …
    • i don't want to be locked into some fancy saas or other tooling that goes away or which i have to regularly upgrade.
    • => I want the underlying content to be in an open, structured format
      • => want to use structured text that I own and control
    • => If possible i want to be able to author the content directly with relatively mininal tools
  • => I want to use markdown as the storage format, stored on my local disk in git and synced to e.g. github
  • And to publish I'm going to use Flowershow …

Summary

  • Long-term home for my thinking and especially a digital garden-esque blog experience
    • Blog
    • Ideas
    • Tao
  • How do I do that?
    • Technically: use markdown + github + flowershow
    • Content wise: migrate incrementally. focus on new features i can include
  • What do i start with?
    • Boot the site
    • Make a video about the project

Video outputs

Plan of work

Tasks

Converting old repo …

  • Convert gitlab repo to github ✅2025-05-23 https://github.com/rufuspollock/old.rufuspollock.com
    • Switch off gitlfs
    • Create repo
    • Push to repo
    • Branch old code and tag
  • Refactor main/master for new website 🚧2025-08-25 reopened as working on this again. See REFACTOR.md ✅2025-08-25 ❌ wontfix as we doing the starting from scratch approach

Starting from scratch (2025-07-16 plan)

1. Repository & Basic Setup

⏸️2025-08-25 pausing on starting from scratch (see below) though this stuff will be useful again later

2. Rough landing home page

  • Sketch rough structure of homepage (can be just headings or notes)
  • Decide on main sections to show on homepage (e.g. About, Ideas, Blog, TAO)
  • Create placeholder content for homepage
    • Minimal title + welcome blurb
    • Basic navigation links (even if broken for now)

3. Ideas Catalog 🧠

  • Create ideas/ directory in content
  • List current and past project ideas from Obsidian
    • Add 3–5 example ideas as Markdown files
    • Add basic frontmatter (e.g. title, status, tags)
  • Create an index page for ideas
    • Use FlowerShow listing page or custom layout

4. Blog Setup 📝

  • Create blog/ directory
  • Add 1–2 recent posts from Obsidian as test content
  • Set up blog index page (chronological list)
  • Create post template (or adapt from default)

🗂️ 5. Content Migration Planning

  • Inventory old Hugo content (blog posts, pages)
  • Decide what (if anything) to migrate now
  • Postpone legacy migration until after launch
  • Consider setting up redirect or archive link to old site

📬 6. Newsletter Integration (Optional for Now)

  • Choose between Substack, Buttondown, or native integration
  • Add placeholder signup form to homepage or footer
  • Postpone full integration until rest of site is live

📌 7. General

  • Maintain a README.md for the repo with goals and structure
  • Keep notes in Obsidian for future tasks and ideas
  • Define next milestone (e.g. public launch, content review)

Notes

2025-09-28

Pre and post refactor: https://github.com/rufuspollock/rufuspollock.com/tree/3d9ecc04d52405d16e6316a517856026846e519a

2025-08-25

  • Where have I got to?
    • OK, let's look at previous videos and notes ✅2025-08-25
  • ⏭️ Brainstorm how i go about refactoring
    • Do i make repo public (does it matter??)
    • Do i record as i go along (yes i think so)
    • How do i begin e.g. do i publish it on flowershow, do i refactor a bit first?
    • How do i do the rework (do i use cursor?)

1. Transcript

So, to recap, where I’m at is that I had this idea to start a clean website from scratch. That’s what I did: I booted up a very basic clean website.

But then I’ve been reflecting: what would actually motivate me to do a new website? What would be exciting? What do I want it to do?

And what I realized is that I want a digital garden aspect. Not my whole private digital garden — I don’t want holiday notes with my partner up online — but in general I’d put as many of my ideas as possible into a public digital garden. More like open-notebook science: putting my intellectual work and notes out in the open.

The thing though is: I want some kind of backbone for that. Just putting up random notes doesn’t work for me. And the backbone I've wanted for a while is an ideas catalog to list the ideas and projects I'm working on – or havce worked on or will work on. That would provide structure for the digital garden. Each item in the digital garden could link back to an idea. So instead of a morass of content, there’s a clear place to start and a way to orient new material.

That’s point one. It’s tied to who I am: I’m a sense-maker, and this is about making sense of the world and making my sense-making public.

Point two: when it comes to Flower Show and showing it off, actually refactoring my existing Hugo site into Flower Show is the better way to go. Because that’s what most people want to do — they already have a site and want to migrate, not start fresh. It’s simpler, I know what I’m doing, and I don’t need to reinvent the structure.

So I have these two things in parallel:

  • On one hand, for speed and demoing, I’ll refactor my current website into Flower Show.
  • On the other hand, I’ll explore the ideas catalogue as the backbone for my digital garden.

2. Brief Summary of the Two Points

  • Ideas Catalogue / Digital Garden Backbone

    • Want a public digital garden, focused on intellectual/open-notebook work.
    • Needs a backbone → an ideas catalogue of projects, products, and hypotheses.
    • Each garden note ties back to an idea, giving coherence and orientation.

  • Refactoring Existing Website into Flower Show

    • More practical and relatable for demoing Flower Show.
    • Easier than starting from scratch.
    • Aligns with the typical user story: migrating an existing site.

Interrelation:

Both approaches move toward a richer public web presence. The ideas catalogue provides the long-term structural vision (a coherent digital garden), while the refactor provides the short-term pragmatic path (quick demo and continuity). They can be pursued in parallel.

3. Scripts

(a) Where I’m At — Turning Point

"I’ve been reflecting on why I’m creating this new website. At first, I just spun up a clean site from scratch. But what I realized is I need to ask: what’s really motivating me? What do I want it to do? And the answer is: I want a public digital garden. A place to share my ideas openly, almost like open-notebook science."

(b) The Ideas Catalogue (YouTube Short Style)

"Here’s the breakthrough: I don’t just want a random digital garden. I want a backbone. And for me, that’s an ideas catalogue — a catalogue of all the projects, products, and hypotheses I’ve worked on over time. Each note I add to the garden can tie back to an idea, so instead of a mess of notes, there’s coherence, orientation, and a place to start."

(c) Refactoring My Website (YouTube Short Style)

"At the same time, for Flower Show, it actually makes more sense not to start from scratch but to refactor my existing site. That’s what most people want to do — migrate their current site into Flower Show. It’s simpler, more relatable, and a great way to quickly show what the platform can do."