Studio Journal

Rebuilding capsizegames.com with Django and static export

Published April 13, 2026

Cowboy Casino menu screen
Cowboy Casino menu screen

The public Capsize Games site now follows the same shape as the local joecurlee.com workflow: Django for authoring, django-distill for export, and a plain gh-pages push for publishing.

That matters for a few reasons.

Why switch

  • The old site was mostly a thin brochure and hard to extend.
  • A proper content model makes it easier to add studio notes, release logs, and project pages without reworking the front end every time.
  • The local workflow is now consistent with the other site already running on this machine.

What changed

  • Project pages are now data-driven.
  • The blog supports markdown posts, categories, tags, and RSS.
  • Static export stays GitHub Pages friendly.
  • Local hosting is designed around a SysV init script on port 8040.

The visual redesign also pushes harder on contrast, layout, and personality instead of leaving everything in a generic app-shell frame.