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The 9-Box Homepage

The homepage shows the site as a grid of nine boxes, one for each section. The grid is a map of how the project is built. On a small screen it becomes a list, with the row colours kept.

The Seed sits in the middle, and the eight other sections circle around it. Everything on the site grows from it, in one way or another.

The middle row: the foundation

The middle row holds the outside voices in Positioning and the two SPLectrum sides in Seed and Reality, the two faces of the coin. These sections adhere to a strict discipline:

• The Seed contains pages about the principles, each page wears a different set of spectacles. It only deals with what is common to all voices.
• Reality is SPLectrum’s own voice built from the Seed principles. It builds SPLectrum’s metaphysics.
• Positioning holds the neutral ground, the other voices. Outside voices are organised under persons and subjects but it also contains SPLectrum resonance rings. These rings collect information with high affinity to SPLectrum. There are three rings: seed, close affinity and wider landscape. Still neutral, but of special interest to SPLectrum.

Within this row, links only run from right to left — from SPLectrum’s own voice towards the common and the neutral, never back — so the voices don’t mix. A neutral page is only ever linked into, so it stays neutral; the common never leans on what is built from it. And every page in these sections is a standalone unit on a single topic — categorised, not sequenced, so there is no set order to read them in.

The bottom row: the technical sections

Below sit three technical sections. Language deals with the dynamic side: languages as relational media, of every kind — natural, formal, software. Vocabulary deals with the static side: concepts and the sets they form. Tools holds the machinery for working with both.

The top row: applied, and free

The top row sits on top of the other two and is free to reference them in any order. In Wonder is the conversation, in short pieces of around 600 words. Real Life works in larger units. Engineering is the philosophy applied in technology.

How the grid fills

The boxes don’t fill at the same pace. The blog, Positioning and the Seed grow together from the start: the conversation, the learning from other voices, the distilling of what they hold in common. Reality can begin once there is enough foundation, and Real Life once that foundation includes Reality. The bottom row needs a mature project. Engineering is an important sideline, outside the main flow.

A reflexive note

The homepage is itself a piece of Real Life: SPLectrum applied to how the project presents itself. The grid is a choice, not a neutral layout — and like everything else here, it will show its worth as the project grows.