Notes from the build

The Blog

Why this site scrolljacks and still ranks, what hand-coding actually buys you, and how the whole thing was built — written by the same person who wrote the code it describes. No ghostwriters, no filler.

Eleven posts, one author

Read up

Illustration on a blue-to-tan gradient: two white cards. "The Navigation" shows a dark menu bar with a green focus ring around the Work link, noted "Tab — focus you can see" and "aria-expanded — state you can hear". "The Images" shows HTML for two images with their alt attributes filled in, noted "describes what it conveys" and "names where it goes". Caption: Two things. Ten minutes. No budget.

July 30, 2026

Website Accessibility Basics: The Nav and Your Images

The two things I find broken first on almost every site: a navigation you cannot use without a mouse, and images with the wrong alt text. The developer’s starting point, with the WCAG level each failure sits at.

July 26, 2026

How Fast Can a New Website Rank? Ours Took a Week.

A brand-new, unfinished site hit page one for its target keyword in seven days. The real Search Console numbers — every click and impression — and the strategy behind them: pick a fight you can win.

Illustration on a blue-to-tan gradient: five white cards fanned like a deck of slides, labeled with this site's real page URLs — home, /web-development/, /portfolio/, /blog/, /contact/ — with a downward arrow beside them, captioned "Five real pages. One continuous scroll."

July 18, 2026

Building a Scroll-Driven Website: A Case Study

The whole story in order: a WordPress site I was done with, a CodePen animation worth keeping, and the chain of real pages it became — the architecture, the rules, what broke, and what shipped.

Illustration on a blue-to-tan gradient: a white code editor window labeled index.html showing a few lines of hand-written HTML, next to a smaller white card listing a crossed-out CMS stack — CMS core, page builder, 23 plugins, database — captioned "One file. Written on purpose."

July 18, 2026

Hand-Coded Websites: The Case for Starting From a Blank File

Not built on a CMS, a page builder or a plugin stack — every page here started as an empty file. Why hand-coded websites are faster and safer than the software-stack version, and the honest answer to “but how do you edit it?”

Illustration of a search results page on a blue-to-tan gradient: a white search bar reading "scroll-driven website design" above three white result cards for thebetterwebsite.com's home, web development, and portfolio pages, each marked with a green "Indexed" badge, captioned "One experience. Real pages. All indexed."

July 17, 2026

Does Scrolljacking Hurt SEO?

One URL, invisible content, heavy scripts — the classic scrolljacked site earns its bad rankings. But Google has no scrolljacking penalty. What actually hurts, and the architecture that fixes it.

Illustration of two white browser windows on a blue-to-tan gradient — one showing thebetterwebsite.com/web-development/, one showing thebetterwebsite.com/portfolio/ — with white motion streaks and an arrow between them, captioned "Two real pages. One seamless move. — the View Transitions API"

July 17, 2026

The View Transitions API in Practice

For a decade, seamless page changes meant an SPA framework. Now the browser animates between real pages on its own — what the View Transitions API is for, and what shipping it taught me.

Illustration of an accessibility settings panel on a blue-to-tan gradient: a "Reduce motion" toggle switched on, above a line reading "Scrolljacking heard you — this site becomes a normal, scrolling page"

July 16, 2026

Is Scrolljacking Bad for Accessibility?

Yes — the way it is usually built. The keyboard, reduced motion, focus order and the back button, what the ADA yardstick actually asks of each, and the four answers that fix them.

Screenshot of the circle-graphic Q&A widget on this hand-coded, scroll-driven homepage: a large blue-to-tan gradient circle with eight numbered question prompts radiating from a center reading "I'm Rebuilding!"

July 15, 2026

What Is Scrolljacking?

It earned a genuinely bad reputation — broken back buttons, locked-out keyboard users, motion nobody asked for. What it actually is, why it went wrong, and why the View Transitions API is bringing it back.

The same vintage wind-up toy robot from 2024 — still here, still not taking my job

July 15, 2026

The AI Revolution, Revisited

Two years ago I asked whether AI would take my job. It didn’t — it made me a powerhouse. On AI-built websites, the “Elementor” symptom, and using the tool right.

Vintage wind-up toy robot, a playful stand-in for artificial intelligence

April 9, 2024

AI. Am I Worried?

While AI has been a thing for many years, it’s only recently began to impact my life. Now, website page builders can generate content for you. Photo editors can change an entire photo based on what you type into an input field.

Person using a white cane while walking along a city sidewalk

November 20, 2023

Why Website Accessibility Matters

The people who can’t use your site don’t email you about it — they leave. What accessibility actually covers, what ADA compliance asks for, and the two offenders anyone can check.

End of the shelf

Meet
Adam.

One person writes these posts and the same person writes the code they are about — that is the whole studio. If a search result dropped you here, the short version is on the method page, the proof is in the work, and the rest of me is over here. The FAQ covers what I get asked most and home is the full tour. Rather ask me directly? Do that. Or keep scrolling — you'll meet me next.
Adam Hoidahl The Better Website

The Better Website is a one-person web design studio in Raleigh, NC, serving the Triangle and clients nationwide. Adam Hoidahl hand-codes every site in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript — not built on WordPress, a page builder or a CMS.