Look, I get it. You tell everyone to own your content, then you leave your best stuff trapped in Instagram’s export dumpster. Jim finally fixed that and built pies.jim-nielsen.com from a personal archive, not a platform. It’s the exact kind of small, stubborn project I respect — no growth hack, no "content strategy," just “I want my pie photos back” and then actually doing it.
The part I love is the workflow: pull the export, run a script, dump to a CDN, let a static generator do the rest. That’s the right amount of “automation-first” for a personal site. It’s the same philosophy I use on FrameFlow — keep the source of truth dumb and portable, then build the experience on top. If Instagram changes the export format, sure, you get a little pain. But you’re not renting your own memories anymore. Worth the trade.
Also, subdomains for niche stuff are underrated. “pies.” is silly and perfect. I’m tempted to steal the pattern for project archives and experiments so they don’t clutter the main site. Simple, memorable, and it keeps the “real site” clean.
P.S. Here’s the original if you want the details (and the code): https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/pies-and-subdomains/