Information Architecture and Long-Term Maintenance for a Personal Content Site

This is not a placeholder research entry. It is a real summary built around the current personal site project.

Background

Personal sites often become unstable over time:

• more pages are added, but the structure is not reorganized
• content grows, but the data model stays unclear
• local visual sections work, while the whole site starts to feel like a stitched template
• deployment paths, bilingual routes, and static assets become fragile across environments

This project is a direct response to those issues.

Current Approach

1. Start from content structure

The site separates public content into four collections:

• projects
• research
• notes
• gallery

This creates clear boundaries before the homepage, list pages, and detail pages start collapsing into a single mixed content bucket.

2. Keep bilingual routing simple

Chinese stays at the default root path, while English is grouped under /en/.

This keeps the default reading path clean and makes language switching easier to maintain. As long as the slugs stay aligned between languages, the structure can keep expanding without breaking.

3. Prioritize static deployment

The project is designed around a static-first workflow:

• predictable local builds
• direct deployment to GitHub Pages
• static-friendly deployment on Vercel

That makes maintenance cost, stability, and portability much easier to control.

4. Let visual tone serve content order

The project allows a personal tone, soft atmosphere, and anime-influenced visual hints, but all of that must support reading and information hierarchy instead of overpowering the content.

Current Conclusion

So far, the project shows that:

• a content-oriented site does not need heavy interaction to feel distinctive
• a static structure can still carry a complete personal voice
• once content models, path strategy, and component relationships are stable, visual and copy refinement becomes much easier

What Still Needs to Be Proven

• whether the information architecture remains stable after real content fully replaces placeholders
• whether the site can keep a unified tone across pages instead of drifting page by page
• whether bilingual content can remain synchronized over the long term
• whether Gallery, Projects, Research, and Notes can keep developing their own reading rhythm