All About Berlin Built in
I built a website called All About Berlin to help immigrants navigate German bureaucracy.
A useful website
Moving to Germany was scary. I had to get a job, find a flat, choose health insurance, apply for residence permit and register my address all alone, in a language I did not understand. The outrageously slow and opaque German bureaucracy made it harder than it should be.
I wrote down what I learned to make it easier for other immigrants. I figured that with a good map, their journey would be half as difficult as mine.
I research and write all the content myself, although I do call upon the knowledge of a dozen trusted experts. I spend most of my days updating and amending existing guides to make them more useful. I call that digital gardening.
A pleasant website
All About Berlin is my answer to the hastily written SEO spam that dominates the web. It proves that a website can be successful without annoying the everliving crap out of your readers.
It has no ads, no paywall, no dark patterns, no newsletter pop-up, no coercive cookie notice, no call to action, no comments, no promoted content, and no share buttons. It gives straight, honest answers for free. That’s it.
The website is funded by affiliate links. That presents its own ethical challenges. However, I have a very straightforward advertising policy, and I stick to it.
Built from scratch
By now, All About Berlin is truly built from scratch. It’s my own research, my own writing, my own photos, my own illustrations and my own design. The website is built with a static site generator I created.
This design is deliberately simple and straightforward. I wanted the content to be the main focus. Both the design and the writing style are inspired by the NHS website.
