The Page Nobody Asks For: A Tour of My Site's Colophon

Every personal website has the usual rooms: a front page, an about page, a contact form that may or may not work. Mine has those too. But the page I keep coming back to is the one almost nobody builds — the colophon.

What a colophon actually is

In publishing, a colophon is the note at the back of a book telling you how it was made: the typeface, the paper, the printer, sometimes the town. On a website, it is the same idea. It is a short page that says: here is the scaffolding, here is why it looks like this, here is what I chose and what I skipped.

Mine lives at chrisjm.co.uk/colophon. It is not a blog post. It is not an about me page in disguise. It is a fact sheet with a pulse.

A quick tour of mine

The bones

The site is static. Eleventy turns a folder of Markdown and Nunjucks templates into HTML. No database, no login, no plugin updates at midnight. I write in Markdown, hit save, and a build runs. It is deeply unglamorous and that is the point.

The hosting

After years of moving hosts like someone rearranging deckchairs, I settled on Mythic Beasts, a UK host based in Cambridge. Krystal in London is another good option if you want UK-based hosting and actual humans on support. The site sits behind Cloudflare for caching and a bit of DNS. I mention this because hosting is one of those choices people are quietly curious about, and a colophon is the polite place to answer.

The type

Headings are set in Fraunces, body text in Inter. Both are open-source. I chose Fraunces because it has a bit of old-book warmth without being fussy, and Inter because it is clear at small sizes on a phone. The fallback stack is system fonts, so if the web fonts fail the page still reads properly.

The accessibility bits

This is where a colophon earns its keep. Mine lists the choices that are easy to miss: a skip link, visible focus states, colour contrast checked against WCAG AA, reduced-motion support for anyone who has asked their device to calm things down, alt text on every meaningful image, and no autoplaying anything. I also note that the site works without JavaScript for reading, even if a few extras need it. Putting this on a page is not a badge; it is a reminder to myself to keep it true.

Why bother?

It builds trust

People are suspicious of websites that feel like they arrived fully formed from a corporate void. A colophon says a person made this, with tools they can name. It also quietly answers the question is this site going to sell me something? before anyone has to ask. That kind of small honesty is worth more than a polished mission statement.

It satisfies curiosity

Some visitors are font nerds. Some are hosting nerds. Some are learning to build their own site and want to know what a real one runs on. A colophon gives them a straight answer without turning the homepage into a technical manual. I have had more emails about my hosting choice than about almost any blog post.

It adds personality

You can be dry and factual, or you can add a line about why you dropped a plugin, or why the footer is that colour. My colophon includes a note that the site has no cookie banner because it does not set tracking cookies. That is a small joke and a real fact. It also tells you something about how I work: I would rather remove a thing than explain a banner.

Keep it short, keep it current

Mine is around 300 words. It does not need to be a changelog. I add a line when something meaningful changes: a new host, a new font, a new accessibility fix. The rest of the time it just sits there, being useful. If you write one, resist the urge to turn it into a memoir. Four short sections are plenty.

Make your own

Start with four headings: built with, hosted by, type, and access. Add anything else you genuinely care about. Link it in the footer. Then forget about it until something changes. It is the least demanding page on the site and one of the most human. And if you are in the UK and weighing up hosts, do look at the smaller local firms first. They answer emails, they know what a bank holiday is, and they will not move your site to a server farm without telling you.