Hello Astro!

Let’s jump back to 2020. I know it was a terrible year, bringing unprecedented changes. But for me, it was also the year I migrated my WordPress blog to the Jamstack. At that time, I was deeply interested in Vue.js and became a big fan of Gridsome, a static site generator based on Vue. So, I used Gridsome to rebuild my blog.

Unfortunately, Gridsome’s development stalled shortly afterward, and the project has shown no signs of life since.

I continued using my static site generator as it was, but it wasn’t very motivating to rely on a dead project. Although there were alternatives, none truly inspired me.

Then I discovered Astro.

Love at First Sight

I was lucky enough to encounter Astro early on—I think it was around version 1.x. Its general concepts were (and still are) very appealing to me. I appreciated that it isn’t based on any specific JavaScript framework. However it supports using multiple frameworks simultaneously if you need that. Astro also appeared (and has proven to be) much more dynamic than Gridsome ever was.

I also loved how understandable it seemed! Astro has excellent documentation and even a step-by-step “Getting Started” guide for building a basic blog. Plus, there are plenty of tutorials about Astro on YouTube.

While the project has become more complex over time (it’s at version 5.1 as of writing), it’s more accurate to say it has become increasingly capable. Despite this, it’s still possible to build the same basic blog as with earlier versions.

Keep it Simple, Stupid

My blog remains very simple, with only a few functions. Because of that, I looked for a starter theme that was similarly minimal. I chose Dante but simplified it even further to suit my needs. 😃 On the other hand, borrowing some ideas from the previous version of my blog, I slightly improved the design—or so I believe. (A big plus for Dante was that it was updated to version 5.x of Astro shortly after its release.)

I kept the concepts I decided on when I moved to Gridsome, with only three changes. I’ve removed the “reading time” feature from the blog posts. Instead, there’s a new “Read next” section that recommends the next and previous posts. (See below. 😉) Additionally, I now have an “All tags” page, which I should have added to the earlier version too.

The code is pushed to GitLab, and the site is hosted on Netlify, just like before. Moving the domain to the new codebase required some thought, but the solution turned out to be simple.

And that’s all for now. I’m happy to use a modern solution that inspires me to learn more and, hopefully, publish more on my blog than before. We’ll see…