Krijitski.net
A cultural digital archive dedicated to old Sofia
Krijitski.net is a cultural digital archive created for Nikolay Bratoev-Krijitski — an author, researcher, and collector of archival photography. The goal was to build more than a simple website. The project needed to become a digital home for books, photographs, and stories about old Sofia. The visual direction is dark, cinematic, and archival, while the technical implementation focuses on performance, SEO, responsive behavior, and production-ready deployment.
Krijitski.net started as an idea for presenting books and archival photographs, but evolved into a complete digital space for preserving the memory of old Sofia. The site was designed to avoid the feeling of a standard blog or generic author page. Instead, it creates an atmospheric experience where photographs, books, and stories feel intentional and important.
My role covered the full process — technical architecture, front-end development, UX decisions, SEO preparation, image optimization, deployment, and production audit. I worked on the site structure, responsive behavior, photo archive, book pages, social previews, favicon/icons, robots/sitemap, security headers, and AWS Amplify deployment.
- —Cinematic homepage with custom loading screen
- —Author books and co-authorship pages
- —Book detail pages with excerpts and covers
- —Optimized photo archive
- —Fullscreen archive viewer
- —Zoom, pan, and mobile swipe in the archive
- —Custom typography and favicon/social preview setup
- —SEO metadata for all main pages
- —sitemap.xml, robots.txt, and structured data
- —Responsive layout for desktop, tablet, and mobile
- —AWS Amplify deployment
The main challenge was combining two different needs: historical sensitivity and a modern web experience. The website had to be visually strong without becoming noisy, modern without feeling disconnected from the topic, and rich in content while remaining easy to navigate. The photo archive also needed to be fast, mobile-friendly, and careful not to expose original image files.
I structured the site around clear sections: homepage, author, books, co-authorship, photo archive, articles, and contact. The photo archive uses optimized thumbnails and preview images, while the viewer supports fullscreen browsing, zoom, pan, and mobile swipe navigation. The book pages include covers, descriptions, and excerpts, and the entire site was prepared for indexing, social sharing, and production deployment.
- ✓Full SEO setup
- ✓Open Graph and Twitter card images
- ✓robots.txt and sitemap.xml
- ✓Security headers
- ✓Redirects and route cleanup
- ✓Unused code cleanup
- ✓Secrets and sensitive data review
- ✓AWS Amplify deployment
- ✓Image optimization
- ✓Mobile Safari fixes
The result is a live production website that presents a personal archive, books, and stories about old Sofia through a unified digital identity. Krijitski.net now works as a public cultural and author archive, ready for sharing, indexing, and real use by readers, journalists, and people interested in the history of Sofia.
