Why I'm Building Simple Static Sites Again in 2025

After years of working with frameworks like Vue and React, and spending much of my time on backend development, architecture, and CI/CD, I've decided to take a step back—back to the fundamentals of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This isn't about rejecting modern tools; it's about rediscovering the joy of building something from scratch, without the added layers of abstraction.

Project

In the early days of the web, a site was just a collection of files—no dependencies, no complex build steps, no JavaScript bundlers. You wrote some HTML, styled it with CSS, added a bit of JavaScript if needed, and it just worked.

And it worked fast.

Even on slow connections, these sites loaded quickly and were easy to maintain.

Today, the web is more powerful than ever, but also more bloated. Many sites ship hundreds of kilobytes (or megabytes) of JavaScript just to display a few paragraphs of text. While frameworks solve real problems, they also introduce complexity that isn't always necessary—especially for content-driven, mostly static websites.

So why does this approach still make sense in 2025?

  • Performance & Simplicity - No client-side hydration, no virtual DOM, no unnecessary JavaScript. Just fast, efficient pages that load instantly.
  • Maintainability - A simple HTML file is easy to edit. Changes can be handled by modifying the page and pushing through a CI/CD pipeline. No dependencies to update, no breaking changes from framework upgrades.
  • Resilience - A plain HTML page will still render even if JavaScript fails. It works across all browsers, even low-powered devices.
  • The Joy of Creation - There's something deeply satisfying about opening an empty folder, writing a few lines of code, and seeing a fully functional website come to life. No need to configure a build system or troubleshoot dependency issues—just build and ship.
This isn't about nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. It's about making conscious choices. Sometimes, the simplest approach is still the best one.

About the artist

Mark Rothko was a Latvian American abstract painter. He is best known for his color field paintings that depicted irregular and painterly rectangular regions of color, which he produced from 1949 to 1970.

Although Rothko did not personally subscribe to any one school, he is associated with the American abstract expressionism movement of modern art.