Moving to Astro

This blog has been my place to show off my creative side, and since I build and develop websites for a living, I am also looking to try the latest and greatest thing. I have decided to rebuild my blog using the Astro web framework.

What is Astro?

Astro is an open-source web framework designed for increased performance as an all-in-one solution. It is designed for content-rich sites like this blog. It has HTML first and zero JavaScript with web components for less client-side rendering to allow a faster and more performant website.

The main selling point for Astro is how highly customizable it is, with many integrations such as Tailwind and MDX, which is what this site uses. Astro uses a frontend architecture called Islands. This results in better performance by helping to avoid monolithic JavaScript patterns and stripping all non-essential JavaScript from the page automatically.

Astro’s design principles are:

Content driven
Server first
Fast and performant
Easy to learn and use
Developer focused

Why Change?

Originally, I had used WordPress and still do so today for some projects. However, for a simple site like this one, WordPress has become too bloated and convuluted. I have also used other platforms, such as Ghost, but I wanted a server-side rendering (SSR) framework that was easy to use.

I first started developing some websites with React and Gastby back in 2018. Gatsby was another framework of which I had been a huge fan, but sadly, development seems to have stalled in the last couple years. Also, the build times seem to be getting longer, and I am always trying to fix some issues with them in my projects. So I started looking into a new web framework in 2023.

I had been watching the development of Astro for a few years now and had tinkered with it off and on. It’s a framework that is easy to learn, organized, customizable, and, most importantly, super fast for an SSR. Astro fits all my needs and continues to add new features all the time.

Rebuild and New Face

So with my choice to move from WordPress to Gatsby and now to Astro, I will soon be bringing my prior content over here. For now, I have finished building a new site for the blog and will eventually move the content over, with an emphasis on showing off my photos in gallery format.

I am also in the process of rebuilding and migrating my company’s website, cobaltweb.tech, over to Astro in the coming weeks.

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