Same! I designed the look of my site, and then wrote Python to generate it, though instead of Jinja I even wrote my own templating library. The goal of reinventing the wheel was to learn Python through writing a non-trivial, useful app and libraries.

I haven't quite mustered up the courage to publish the source, yet, though: being a learning exercise I'm painfully aware some of the code is not as good as it should be. And I'm still learning what makes Python code Pythonic.

> What happened to "I'll edit this .html file and FTP it up..."

A SSG _is_ that, these days. My SSG generates my own site design. If I tweak the site's look and feel, I do that once and re-run the SSG. I wouldn't want to have to do that across multiple HTML files.

My process is:

* Write Markdown

* Run the SSG script

* FTP it up (overwriting previous contents; I have dated backups of every version, and the most recent run of the SSG is the canonical version.)

I entered the site in the competition, since it's no-Javascript, pure HTML & CSS, minimal, manuscript-style typographic focus, with articles on design, management, and the just plain miscellaneous. Very much going for the 'old-school personal site about whatever someone finds interesting' feeling, and hopefully some bits will be of interest to HN people too, maybe. https://daveon.design if you're interested!