WordPress to Svelte
The old site was a WordPress theme. The new one is a reactive system that performs the work it describes. Notes from the rebuild.
Why leave WordPress
The previous arkadata.com was a WordPress and YOOtheme build. It was fine as a brochure. It was never going to host what this concept needs: an audio-driven, GL-rendered hero, a colour system the music itself moves, visuals wired to the structure of a track. A CMS fights all of that. So I left it, and kept only what was worth keeping, the typographic chassis and the proportions.
Static, owned, no backend
The rebuild is SvelteKit on a static adapter, deployed on Vercel. No backend, no database, plain JavaScript. The constraints are the point: a fully static, owned surface with nothing to breach on a server and nothing to rot. Everything interesting happens on the client, by design.
The site is the system
The core move is that the homepage does not advertise the work, it runs it. The GL hero (a particle field plus a procedural skyline), the theme that re-tints from the music, the GL contexts that survive navigation instead of tearing down: the site is a live demo of the engine it is selling. The homepage shows the system; the Log explains it.
- Left WordPress / YOOtheme for SvelteKit + adapter-static.
- Built the reactive GL hero (FormField field + WebGL2 skyline).
- OKLCH theme system, re-tinted live by the playing track.
- Persistent GL across navigation, no per-route teardown.
This is really the head of a series. Each line in that changelog (the GL architecture, the theme system, persistent GL) wants its own entry. Tell me which to expand first and I will spin it out. A before and after of old versus new site fits nicely here too.