Why this site runs on EmDash

I put this site off for years. There was always a client project or an idea that felt more important. A site of your own is easy to set aside when nobody is waiting for it.

When I finally sat down, what I wanted most was to open the site and start writing right away. I have built enough websites to know how it usually goes. First comes a nice home page, then a blog bolted on afterwards with its own login and its own database. Six months later nobody logs in anymore. I didn't want my own site to end up like that.

That is why I chose EmDash, an open-source CMS built on Astro. Astro is what I most like building with these days and the site runs on Cloudflare, so it all fits together. I write pages, projects and posts in the same place. It is a calm place to work and that matters more than you might think. A tool you enjoy is one you open on an ordinary Tuesday night.

Then I got more involved than I had planned. In July I translated EmDash into Swedish. The project kept growing and by the end of September more than 1,300 strings showed up in English again. So I went back and translated the rest. Most of the time went into choosing words. Bylines, for example, is Skribenter in Swedish. The change was merged the same afternoon and shipped with EmDash 1.1. You get to know a tool differently once you have been inside it. Today I trust EmDash enough to run my own site on it.

I use translations on this site too. It is in both Swedish and English. I write in Swedish first and then translate in EmDash, where every post has its own translations panel.

This is mostly a hello from Västerås. I'll write when I have something to tell, about what I build with kemero and about working with AI agents every day. If you want to say something, email me. I read everything.