> Please explain which part of my site isn't just the content, presented pleasantly?
I'm not the person you asked, so forgive my jumping in here, but I feel I have a helpful answer.
Design serves function. The function of a website with text is to be read. Your site's design is hard and unpleasant to read. Here's what made it difficult for me to parse and read your page:
1. The title looked like a banner offering a newsletter or cookie preferences. I ignored it. My eyes jumped to the subheadings "router" and "template". It took me too long to discern what I was reading. At first I thought it was a list of blog posts titled "router" and "template".
2. The white, thin text on black background was difficult to read. My astigmatism makes dark on light a strong preference for me. Light on dark can be okay if the font has enough weight to minimize deformation of the letter forms. Here you chose a very thin font.
3. The ragged left edge of each paragraph is harder to scan. The return sweep took longer. It is also reminiscent of poetry which felt out of place.
4. The bright background lines drew my eye in a downward on the right and upward on the left, further making the return sweep less comfortable. It is brighter than the text and nagging at my peripheral vision.
5. The text in the comment box was too low contrast to be comfortable.
6. The right menu was invisible to me until I was critically looking over the design.
It was very stylistic and striking. Aesthetically good. But these design choices are at odds with the functionality of reading, at least for me.
> The title looked like a banner offering a newsletter or cookie preferences
That's a problem with other sites though isn't it?
> My astigmatism makes dark on light a strong preference for me
You can find accessibility-enhancing browser extensions. I use one for the exact opposite myself, to turn bright sites into dark ones. Can't account for every disability.
> It is also reminiscent of poetry which felt out of place
Great! My site has lots of poetry. Not out of place at all.
> The text in the comment box was too low contrast to be comfortable
Thanks, I've suspected this to be the case. Will address.
> That's a problem with other sites though isn't it?
I think of design as being done in a context. Few websites use green to indicate a toggle has been turned off and red to indicate a toggle has been turned on because most websites use green to indicate on or go and red to indicate off or stop. Websites are designed in that cultural context where that makes sense (there are cultures in which it's not those colors). I wouldn't expect for a website to buck that context and then say it was a problem with other websites and not the one that's deviating from norms.
Toast banners being colorful on white or black backgrounds is a design language I see all over the place. It's the context of the web. So when I encountered a colorful banner on a black field, my eyes ignored it (based on their experience elsewhere before I browsed to your site) and traveled elsewhere first. It was only when I became confused by the contents elsewhere did I take a second, closer look at the top and realized what I was reading.
Not a big deal really, but I wanted to share this one reader's experience with first impressions.
> You can find accessibility-enhancing browser extensions. I use one for the exact opposite myself, to turn bright sites into dark ones. Can't account for every disability.
No, you cannot. I don't expect sites to. I have a custom CSS I use to improve readability when it's low. But, I have noticed that many sites that are white text on dark backgrounds are reasonably readable when they choose fonts that have some weight to them. Face weight is the lever there. If you wanted to, you could increase the weight of your font a smidgen and provide a good experience to both people with astigmatism and people who prefer dark color schemes. But design choices are personal and you can keep it nice and thin too. Again, I was sharing my first impression on readability.
> Great! My site has lots of poetry. Not out of place at all.
Maybe it's not out of place, but I didn't see any poetry on that page. It was a colophon. If it was meant to be poetic, it went over my head. But, I am a mere student of poetry. Not a poet myself.
As I mentioned, I like the look of your site. I find some of the design choices to hinder readability which I value over aesthetics. Design is about finding that balance between aesthetics and functionality and not everyone agrees on where that balance should fall.
I was not the only one who found that some of the design choices distracted from the content or made the content harder to read. Now you know and can do or not do what you will with that information. But saying that your readers are "wrong" is an odd way to go about it.
I'm not the person you asked, so forgive my jumping in here, but I feel I have a helpful answer.
Design serves function. The function of a website with text is to be read. Your site's design is hard and unpleasant to read. Here's what made it difficult for me to parse and read your page:
1. The title looked like a banner offering a newsletter or cookie preferences. I ignored it. My eyes jumped to the subheadings "router" and "template". It took me too long to discern what I was reading. At first I thought it was a list of blog posts titled "router" and "template".
2. The white, thin text on black background was difficult to read. My astigmatism makes dark on light a strong preference for me. Light on dark can be okay if the font has enough weight to minimize deformation of the letter forms. Here you chose a very thin font.
3. The ragged left edge of each paragraph is harder to scan. The return sweep took longer. It is also reminiscent of poetry which felt out of place.
4. The bright background lines drew my eye in a downward on the right and upward on the left, further making the return sweep less comfortable. It is brighter than the text and nagging at my peripheral vision.
5. The text in the comment box was too low contrast to be comfortable.
6. The right menu was invisible to me until I was critically looking over the design.
It was very stylistic and striking. Aesthetically good. But these design choices are at odds with the functionality of reading, at least for me.