How this site
is made.
A note on the tools, typefaces, and the philosophy of restraint behind monaboulsi.com.
The two typefaces.
Display headings are set in Playfair Display — a high-contrast didone serif designed by Claus Eggers Sørensen. Chosen for the editorial weight it gives titles and the way its italic settles into pull-quotes without theatrics.
Body prose is set in Source Serif 4 — Frank Grießhammer's descendant of Source Serif Pro, optimized for screen reading at long lengths. Old-style numerals are enabled in body text. Tabular numerals in metadata. Both typefaces load with font-display: swap so reading begins before fonts arrive.
A small palette,
used precisely.
The base is #09080A — a near-black that sits a half-step warmer than pure black on most displays. Body text is #F5F0E8 — a bone tone that reduces the harshness of pure white at long reading lengths. The single accent is #C9A96E, a desaturated antique gold reserved for emphasis — one element per screen, never more. Hairlines and dividers use #3A3835.
No framework. No build step.
The site is hand-written HTML5, CSS3, and vanilla JavaScript. No React, no Vue, no Next, no static site generator. Each page is its own file. Each file is small enough to read top to bottom in one sitting.
Schema.org JSON-LD is woven through every page so crawlers and AI engines have a coherent entity graph to read. The site is deployed as static files on Hostinger via a standard .htaccess for clean URLs.
Tools.
Claude Code
The site is co-authored with Claude Code. Most pages were drafted by hand, then audited and refined together.
Hostinger
Static files served via Apache with LiteSpeed acceleration. Compression and caching configured in .htaccess.
Kit
The Tuesday newsletter and the diagnostic quiz live on Kit at theseconddraft.net.
Logic Pro
All five podcasts are produced and edited in Logic Pro and distributed via Spotify for Podcasters.
What we left out.
There are no analytics scripts. No third-party trackers. No cookie banners because no cookies. No popups, no chatbots, no exit-intent overlays. The only third-party request the site makes is to Google Fonts.
Every line of CSS exists for a reason. Every font weight is justified. Every scroll-triggered surface respects prefers-reduced-motion. The site is meant to feel like the work it serves: deliberate, considered, and quiet.
View source.
Right-click anywhere on the site and choose "View Page Source." That is the entire build. Nothing hidden, nothing minified beyond recognition. The site is meant to be readable as code as it is meant to be readable as prose.