Why don't personal websites work like Apple Notes?

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately studying design and growth loops, and it’s led me to a question I can't quite shake:

Why is the "back" button still the primary way we browse someone's ideas?

Think about the last time you found a blog you actually liked. You read an article, you’re hooked, and you want to see what else they’ve written. To do that, you almost always have to:

Click "Back" or "Home."
Scroll through a long feed of thumbnails to find something else interesting.
Click in, read, and repeat.

It’s a "Hub and Spoke" model that feels increasingly heavy. It’s like having to walk back to the lobby of a library every time you want to pick up a second book.

What if we leaned into the "Sidebar"?

I’ve been looking at the Apple Notes layout—the classic "Master-Detail" view. You have your folders on the left, your list of notes in the middle, and the content on the right.

In Notes, I can jump from a thought on AI reliability to a note on startup growth in a single click. There’s no "loading state" for my brain. I’m just... exploring.

So, what if personal websites worked like that?

What if, instead of a static homepage, a blog was a workspace? You could see the breadth of someone’s thinking in the sidebar—the tags, the chronological build-in-public updates, the raw ideas—while diving deep into one specific post in the main pane.

This is interesting
- Because

This is cool
Because

The "App-like" Curiosity

I wonder if the reason we don’t see this more is just inertia. We’re so used to "web-first" design (single columns, big headers, lots of scrolling) that we’ve forgotten that most of our best thinking happens in "app-first" interfaces.

As we build out Cleve, I’m obsessed with this idea of low-friction, high-personality experiences. If the goal is to capture mindshare, shouldn't the interface make it as easy as possible for someone to get "lost" in your library of thoughts?

Maybe the "website" of the future shouldn't feel like a website at all. Maybe it should feel like an extension of your notebook.

I’m curious—does the traditional blog layout feel like a "chore" to anyone else, or have we just been conditioned to think this is the only way to browse the web?