Weird website ideas

First published July 28, 2025.

The most recent update was on December 4, 2025.

I am explicitly not claiming any of these are good ideas.

Anyhow:

• ’90s website vibe (think Geocities) but it aggressively uses P3-only colors in large solid blocks and not just in passing (like in photographs of flowers)
• a website that’s dark-mode-primary and the light mode is an underwhelming if not downright broken/ugly knockoff
• a website where light mode and dark mode look totally different from each other, like two unrelated CSS Zen Garden themes
• the above, but with two more completely different high-contrast variants
• …and don’t have JavaScript toggles for any of this, effectively having multiple levels of easter egg
• having your blog be at, instead of /blog/, /p/ (and have neither an extension nor a trailing slash) so the URLs look like they’re hosted on Substack (even when they’re not)
• Have a website with no HTML, just unprocessed Markdown
• Have a website with no HTML, just unprocessed Gemtext
• Have a website with no HTML, just PDFs (and maybe Typst sources)
• Use Atkinson 1-bit dithering for all the images, but instead of black/white, ensure the images’ pixels are either black or transparent, and make sure all the images are on a white background. In dark mode, have the “white” background turn bright green like MessagePad 130/2000/2100’s backlight
• The above, but with 16 shades of gray (well, black, white, and 14 grays in between) and probably a different dithering algorithm to lean into the MessagePad 2000/2100 look
• The above, but the entire background is that bright green, pretty much defeating the purpose of having a dark mode on your website

References and inspiration

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