What is GeekSpy?
GeekSpy was originally a side project to create a web forum with a retro ForumPlanet skin. To get a genuine look and feel, I put effort into retrieving ForumPlanet's original user icon collection and worked to modernise them for posterity. They have character, and needed a home.
With the forums now archived and my other hobby websites done and dusted, GeekSpy has now become my little corner of the web. It is my online garden, my binary bonsai if you will. While celebrating a place in time and cyberspace, it also serves as a platform for me to tinker with code and stay current with modern web technology. That's not something I get to do in my day job anymore. Some of the basics on GeekSpy include:
- Modern HTML and CSS features such as popovers, view transitions, and responsive grid layouts.
- Dark mode support via CSS variables, automatically adjusting to your system theme.
- Efficient and high-quality transparent and animated images in AVIF and WEBP formats.
- Current web security standards such as Content Security Policy and Strict Transport Security.
- Performance optimisations such as edge caching, early hints, and image transformations.
None of the above is particularly special, but it does highlight how different things are in web technology compared to the old table-based layouts, limited image formats, and laissez-faire security from the turn of the millenium.
.net
Here are some key tools I have used to construct GeekSpy.net:
- Waifu2x upscaling, used to modernise the decades-old ForumPlanet user icons and 88x31 buttons, giving a cleaner look on higher-res displays.
- Mozilla's HTTP Observatory and Google's PageSpeed Insights to test against best practices in web security and performance.
- And of course, W3C's HTML and CSS validators to ensure my code is well-formed.
The site is hosted on Cloudflare, and makes use of many features on that platform including:
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Pages & Functions
All hosting is on Cloudflare Pages via a connected GitHub repo. This leaves me with no server to maintain, and no recurring costs beyond the domain name. A Pages Function is used to combine header, sidebar, and footer HTML fragments without the need for a static site generator. -
D1 Database & Workers
A daily Cloudflare Worker ingests various gaming news RSS feeds into a D1 database, skipping over any content that matches keywords associated with adverts and paid content. A Pages Function then inserts the news headlines into relevant pages when serving them. -
Image Transform
A simple transform feature allows me to serve remote newsfeed images with automatic resizing and compression to greatly decrease file sizes using modern formats. Useful for those feeds whose thumbail images are wallpaper-sized.
The above features (and some CSS hacks) have allowed for a fast and JavaScript-free user experience, sitting on top of all the security and performance features that Cloudflare offers by default. While I'm wary of vendor lock-in, the current tech stack offered for free is simply too good a deal to pass up for now.
- Cyrris
GeekSpy.net is designed to be essentially maintenance-free, and will remain online for as long as I am tinkering on the web.