Thanks! My genuine geocities site back in the day was much cringier, but I'm trying to have fun with it this round.
Here's a screenshot. It was just an off-the-walls theme that stood in contrast with all of the others in that version. https://blog.codinghorror.com/a-tribute-to-the-windows-31-hot-dog-stand-color-scheme/
That's the theme up! You can find it under the 'Tubular Meat Gantry' theme in settings.
Without server side scripting, the json approach is probably the best we can hope for. On my articles, I create new HTML files for each one, but then have a table of contents JS file that handles the menu navigation both on my front page for highlights, and for the main blog listings. However they're more articles vs small blogs, so it wouldn't make sense to keep them all encoded in arrays.
Ah, still doesn't mean i couldn't improve the client-side javascript. ~1/2-1 second is pretty unsatisfactory, even if it's un-noticable.