How Content Is Organized on Exa's Corner's Digital Garden

Exa's Corner is the personal site of Exa, Java developers and Unix/BSD sysadmins who have run open source code and free online services full-time since 2009. The site describes itself as a "digital garden" — a place to put random things without worrying about deployment, revisions, or standards — and its content is organized as a flat, intentionally messy Document Listing of garden pages and old blog posts rather than a polished project catalog. The listing supports star markers to flag unread or updated entries, and the site hot-reloads when JavaScript is enabled.

What the site is

The homepage introduces Exa as primarily known for Minecraft mods, but also responsible for the Sleeping Town community and the Jortage hosting project. The site is explicitly framed as a living document: it may change while you are reading it if the authors are writing at the same time. The page itself notes that with JavaScript enabled, pages hot-reload on update and last-modified times become visible.

How the Document Listing works

The core navigation element is the Document Listing section, which the page describes as containing "all our garden pages and old blog posts." Key characteristics:

• Flat structure, no categories. The page admits "It's a bit of a mess in here. That's the point." Entries are not grouped into a formal taxonomy.
• Mixed content types. Garden pages (notes, references, small tools) sit alongside older blog posts.
• Star markers. The listing lets you "Show stars next to entries you haven't read, or have been updated since you last read them" — a read/unread tracking aid rather than a rating system.
• Living updates. Because the site hot-reloads, the listing and its last-modified times can change while you browse.

What kinds of entries appear

The page gives a sample of the "random orphaned shit" that otherwise would not be linked from anywhere, including:

The listing also includes longer-form technical notes, such as "Migrating Git repos to SHA-256" (flagged on the page as "so extremely underdocumented"), "JVM Arguments" ("Say no to snake oil"), and a Djot note described as "Markdown but it isn'…" (truncated in the source).

How to read the garden

1. Start at the Document Listing. It is the only index of garden pages and old blog posts; there is no separate archive or tag page described.
2. Enable JavaScript if you want hot reload and visible last-modified times. Without it, the page states you simply won't see those features.
3. Use the star markers to track what you have read and what has changed since your last visit — useful given the site's stated habit of constant edits.
4. Expect disorder. Entries are not curated into a project portfolio; the page even carries a TODO note about adding "an actual fucking project listing." Treat the listing as a notebook, not a catalog.

Where else to follow the work

The homepage points to the same community bridged across a Matrix Space and Discord Guild, plus Mastodon, Forgejo (source code), Modrinth and CurseForge (Minecraft mods), PeerTube, GitHub, Codeberg, Bluesky, Tumblr, Twitch, and YouTube. Email is described as "reliable (not fast)." The site also lists donation options — Helcim direct card/ACH (preferred), Patreon, Liberapay, and PayPal — for readers who want to support the open source work and free services; no pricing or login requirements for the site itself are stated on the page.

Bottom line

If you are looking for a structured documentation site, Exa's Corner will frustrate you. If you want a low-friction, frequently updated notebook of technical notes and small tools from long-time Java and Unix developers, the Document Listing plus its star markers is the intended way in — and the mess is deliberate.