Astro as a static site generator
Since first setting it first during Simon Vrachliotis' workshops, I've started evaluating Astro as an option for building static websites alongside PHP options like Sculpin and Jigsaw, and used it to rebuild my personal website.
As well as being a good opportunity to get more experience with JavaScript, TypeScript and JSX templating, Astro includes a number of features that were useful for my website, such as code syntax highlighting and markdown support out of the box, as well as integrations to set up Tailwind CSS, sitemaps and images that I needed.
Its file-based routing is very familiar to what I'd been working with in Next.js, including dynamic and nested routes such as my Blog, Talks, and email archive pages.
A static HTML version of the site can be generated which can be uploaded to a web server - like with other static site generators - with the advantage that Astro includes no JavaScript by default.
As well as my personal website, I've been using Astro for some other mini-projects including building Bootstrap components with Tailwind, and I'm using it for the updated examples for my Tailwind CSS talk at nor(DEV):con in a couple of weeks time.
- Oliver
