Website Refresh 2026
For everything there is a season. Winter is a time of rest and re-birth. The winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night, begins the Winter season. From this point forward, there’s a little more daylight added to each subsequent day. So I think of the Winter Solstice as a day of optimism. Then we begin the new year. We start imagining the possibilities ahead. In that spirit, I decided to give my site an update. This website refresh is still built on WordPress. This article is about my thoughts and process of developing my website refresh.
Website Refresh or Rebuild
When I started this process, there was a fundamental question I needed to answer – Do I want to rebuild my site from the ground up on a new platform, or update the current site with a new design. Initially, I was firmly in the camp of rebuilding it. It was exciting to think about all the possibilities of what I could build. Something was holding me back though. It was going to be a lot of work. But I didn’t know how much exactly. You see, I had this crazy idea to build my own CMS platform. Yup, that’s right. I was on the cusp of making a classic developer mistake of reinventing the CMS. I felt like I needed something new; As if all the currently available options, were insufficient for what I wanted to build. I trapped myself. I wanted to put all my effort into rebuilding website once. So I was postponing my website redesign, until I could find the time to build out my website management platform. This train of thought prevented me from taking action. I still feel the pull of desire to create my own website management platform, but I decided to push that off to the future.
Instead, I went the other way. I needed to focus on pragmatism and progress. I decided to do a website refresh; Take small steps and create forward momentum. It’s easy to write this off as “just a coat of paint” on an existing structure. In this new incarnation, it might feel like that. But during this process I was also looking at typography, content style, web components, modern css features, and Javascript module development. I have big dreams for my website. They just feel more obtainable now. I discovered a number of great personal websites during my research. They provided a lot of inspiration. But I need to keep reminding myself to make forward progress. Dreams are wonderful, but action creates productivity.
Building the theme
To build a new theme, I needed a modern foundation. After all, I’m gonna be running this in production ultimately. So I need to ensure that my new theme will work on the latest WordPress version, as well as my current version. To do both, I’m gonna need Docker. I decided to take the opportunity to build some Docker skills by creating my own Docker environment. It uses the latest version of WordPress and WP-CLI.
Once I had my development environment working, I copied my current Aquatech theme. I named it NYC Tech. In software terminology, it’s a hard fork. I’ll taking this theme into its own direction. As I looked through the code base, I saw lots of opportunity for improvement. Some things are not wrong, per se. Rather, I’d just make different decisions for how I’d organize things today. For this initial version though, I didn’t want to be too drastic with structural changes. One thing I did do was update all the function name prefixes to match the current theme name. In future versions, I’ll be reorganizing the file structure.
One of my goals with this theme is to make it easier to update, and make the content more dynamic. The ability to change the background photo easily seems like a good way. I’d like to change the photo monthly, to start. Creating the need to take photos has the additional benefit of inspiring me to go outside and explore the city. Historically, I haven’t taken many photos, or edited them. So I have a skill issue to overcome. That’s part of the fun, right?
Conclusion
The website refresh launched with a photo of Bryant Park covered in snow. It’s a reflection of the time in NYC when I developed the website refresh. NYC recently had to significant snowfalls in early 2026. Also, I love the snow. Now that Spring is upon us, I look forward to continuing the renewal of my website, as I add new features, improve content, and add design treatments to create a better user experience. Stay tuned! I encourage you to follow my RSS feed, if you’re that kind of nerd. I am.