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No one is perfect, this is why we have things like checkpoints or gates in the form of pull requests, linting, type checking, and tests. What happens when you work on small side projects by yourself that try to be content focused? What happens when you end up building a lot of the tech under that site and build it on the bleeding edge of all the tech you make? They are likely missing these things and occasionally there are some periods of regression. This is one reason I really like the term digital garden to describe one's small corner of the internet where they share their thoughts.
There will be regressions
The Signs #
There were signs, signs I did not notice
Chat
is your rss feed broken?
I'm not seeing anything show up in my rss reader
me
Do I not put thoughts in my rss feed, I swore I did.
Chat
my fault, Turns out I must have already clicked it in my reader.
me
great, glat it's working
...But it wasn't
Later this week comes the next sign that I also choose to ignore... Google search has unindexed a number of pages due to a soft 404. I don't look at all of the emails from search console, but I did happen to see this one, and thought "Huh, that's odd" and went on with my day without another thought on the issue.
Huh, that's odd
The Discovery #
I didn't realize I even had an issue until later that week when I went to my archive myself and noticed the shape of it looks off. When I opened up my feed something felt off, it was only the big posts. Thoughts show up as a different kind of card
Then it hit me.
Something just felt off
Thoughts are Gone!
The Fix #
I popped open my config and immediately knew what happened. I turned off some plugins locally for faster build iteration and that change found its way into production.... because I have nothing to check myself on other than me. The plugin is now back and thoughts are flowing from thoughts.waylonwalker.com to waylonwalker.com, no problem.
❯ git log -p commit adeb9812f7ecf4d9a68c6aa5e01e549e4dd91285 (HEAD -> main, origin/main, origin/HEAD) Author: Waylon S. Walker <[email protected]> Date: Mon Nov 3 19:56:40 2025 -0600 thoughts were missing diff --git a/markata.toml b/markata.toml index 59539bab..a55a494d 100644 --- a/markata.toml +++ b/markata.toml @@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ hooks = [ 'plugins.chartjs', 'plugins.md_video', 'plugins.post_model', - # 'plugins.thoughts', + 'plugins.thoughts', # "plugins.wikilink_hover", # "plugins.wa_wikilink_hover", "plugins.tippy_wikilink_hover",
Owning Everything has a cost #
You see here I am a one man show. I own the content, the build, the infra that does the build. I love it, but there is so much to do for one persons side project passion project. Did I bite off more than I can chew? Did I choose the wrong abstraction level for my needs? Should I have better tests in place? Or is this just a digital garden that has ebs and flows, growing weeds and pruning them every few months?