Matthew Howell is
an American software developer and
sometimes other kind of person.
Hello from Delaware Philadelphia New York City Bangkok Minnesota Philadelphia–checks notes–New Jersey.
My name is Matthew Howell and you are reading the About page of my personal website, on the World Wide Web.
Since 2005, it’s been my life’s great privilege to work on and around the Web. That work has most often been software development, but it has occasionally pushed into design and teaching.
I spent my childhood in Delaware, my formative adulthood in New York City, and now live somewhere between the two.
Some interests that have found non-trivial places in my life include tea, trees, public libraries, public transportation, cameras, walking, gardens, language, physical books, small video games, and pizza.
And why does this website exist? You can read its official stated purpose, but mostly just because making websites is fun, so why not? The Web is for everyone, even me.
Exhale and let’s all agree that this sure seems like enough information for any reasonable person.
For questions, proposals, and hellos, send an email to hellos@matthewhowell.net.
About this website
Below, find details about how this site is built and hosted.
TLDR;
This website is stored in plaintext files, the HTML is generated by Hugo, changes are tracked in a git repository on Github, and it’s hosted by Netlify. It uses Plausible Analytics to collect site traffic numbers without compromising user privacy.
Hugo
Hugo is a static site generator that is used to turn a series of plaintext markdown files and templates into CSS and HTML files. Hugo is fast and it’s fine, if a bit complex. If I were starting the site today, I’d probably choose Zola as the static site generator, but there are lots of choices.
Hosting
This website is static (meaning it has no server component, it is simply an appropriately structured directory of documents). The site is hosted on Netlify. No complaints.
Github
The canonical version of this website is stored in a git repository, hosted by Github. Again, no complaints.
Deployment
New commits are pushed to the master branch of the site’s git repository, Netlify watches that respository and on each change, it deploys the new version of the site.
Analytics
I have a personal distaste for collecting information about humans.
That belief is reflected in the tools that I choose when I build websites. matthewhowell.net uses Plausible Analytics to provide a few simple site statistics. It collects no personally identifying information about the visitors of this site.
“By using Plausible Analytics, all the site measurement is carried out absolutely anonymously. Cookies are not set and no personal data is collected. All data is in aggregate only. The website owner gets some actionable data to help them learn and improve, while the visitor keeps having a nice and enjoyable experience.”
Read more about privacy at Plausible Analytics
Why collect anything at all? Well, it is sometimes useful to know if particular parts of the site are receiving larger amounts of traffic. That’s all! No secret reasons.