Rebuilding this site with Astro

The previous version of this site was an Angular 15 single-page app with Bootstrap and jQuery. It worked, but it was a lot of framework for what is, ultimately, a page about me. It had been sitting long enough that updating it felt like archaeology.

So I rebuilt it with Astro. The site now compiles to HTML and CSS, with a little JavaScript for the theme toggle, mobile menu, scroll animations, and project images. There’s no client-side framework to load.

Why static

This site deploys to plain static hosting. That constraint turns out to be a feature:

• No database. Blog posts are markdown files in the repo. Writing a post is writing a file; publishing is a git push and a build.
• Simple hosting. There’s no application server or CMS to maintain. The host just serves the files from the build.
• Fast by default. Every page is pre-rendered at build time.

The old repo actually contained an abandoned docker-compose.yml for a WordPress + MySQL setup, the road not taken. A markdown folder does the same job with zero infrastructure.

What carried over

The content moved into typed data files, so updating the site means editing one TypeScript object instead of hunting through component templates. The design is new: dark-first with a light mode, and considerably less Bootstrap.

More posts to follow. There’s an RSS feed if that’s your thing.