I have rebuilt this personal website a few times over the years:
- 2014: Jekyll, default github pages, didn’t have to configure anything!
- 2018: Metalsmith, wanted to work with a javascript based static site generator
- 2019: Django + Nuxt.js, wanted an excuse to learn Django and Vue better
- 2021: Eleventy, back to a static site generator, because deploying and maintaining separate backend and frontend applications was a pain
And now, Astro, because it is fantastically flexible and has good typescript support. I’ve really enjoyed the experience so far, it really feels like I’ll be able to go any direction I would like in the future. Amusingly, I started an Astro rewrite a couple years ago and got distracted after writing my own custom schema and validation layer with Zod. Now, Astro has pretty much that exact functionality baked in to their content layer, so don’t let anyone tell you that procrastination never pays off.
Beyond the technical, I’ve got two major intentions for this revision of my website.
Firstly, on every previous version of the website I failed to kill the waterfall in my own brain. I put in an enormous amount of work before launching and then don’t touch much outside of content until I rewrite it again. This time, I have put the minimum amount of work in up front to be satisfied with re-launching and I am hoping to be steadier about incremental improvements and tinkering.
Secondly, I’ve recently encountered a lot of people blogging in the classic, low-stakes sense and it has been inspiring. In the past I’ve had a needlessly high bar for writing. I would only write when I hadn’t seen anyone else write on a topic or I hadn’t been able to find an answer to my question published elsewhere. This time around, I hope to be far less precious about when I publish.
Thanks to the Astro team for making a fine framework, Scott Kellum for teaching me everything I know about design and typography, Paweł Grzybek for inspiring me with a wonderfully simple layout, and Molly White for her inspiring speaking and writing on the version of the web we all hope for.