What a shiny new site!
Published on 02/11/2024
Welcome to my brand new site! I hope you like it. It’s been a fun process building it from scratch. I’m excited to share the journey and the decisions that shaped this redesign.
Visual redesign was a big driving factor for the upgrade, I wanted to focuses on a lightweight, modern aesthetic, putting emphasis on simplicity and keeping content at the centre of attention. I also wanted to move away from older technologies such as WordPress and PHP, not only to avoid the ongoing controversies but to realise the benefits modern web technologies offer.
After exploring various options, I decided on the Jamstack architecture, which aligns with my goals for performance and scalability.
For the site’s core, I adopted Astro and utilised its content collections feature which offers a seamless way to manage and present content written in markdown. This easily let me structure pages and posts containing metadata such as date, title, descriptions, tags, etc. The data simply goes in the front matter of the document and can be accessed by pages and components using JS, it even generates TS types.
Paired with Decap CMS this has allowed me to implement a simple CMS solution that requires no dedicated backend server. I can simply write some content via the admin UI, wait for the build to re-deploy and see the new post or page live! All of which takes less than 30 seconds thanks to Astro and Vite’s mega quick build process. Astro content even supports html in markdown, allowing for real flexibility when writing content.
I’ll be writing a more detailed post about Jamstack and Astro in the near future so come back soon!