Astro is a step in the right direction. But I wonder why in 2024 we still have to deal with proprietary component languages? I would like something like Astro with web components. Perhaps with the help of lit.
With this the pure markdown content could be easily enriched with components.
From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
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Re: From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
#12I don’t love js/ts but Astro is so nice. Don’t have to fiddle with react or graphql. Just upgraded to 5 beta and nothing broke. Really well managed project. Oh, and page load speed is insane.
If you don't love js/ts maybe you'd like Civet, which transpiles to js/ts and has Astro integration. (No relationship, I've just been looking at it myself.)
Re: From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
#13I have heard great things about astro, but my experience with Gatsby keeps me away. I would much rather keep an SSR framework like Remix and handle whatever pipeline is needed myself. No magic.
I felt the same way! But I came around. Take a look at the source code for a component [1]. The .astro format is pretty much just TS, CSS, and HTML. I don't even need React anymore. Way less glue code and dependencies than with Gatsby. There is a configuration file and some abstractions for things like collections, but almost everything is opt-in.
[1] https://github.com/jwngr/jwn.gr/blob/master/src/components/b...
Re: From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
#14Cannot use React UI lib with Astro such as Mantine. With Gatsby it was possible.
Astro is MPA while Gatsby provided SPA-like navigation.
That's why Astro is not really a replacement.
Re: From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
#15Astro is great. I love that I can mix and match between markdown, plain HTML, and Svelte components as needed (and even intermix them within a page). Pretty much the sweet spot I always wanted for a blog or marketing site: 98% static stuff, 2% sprinkles of JS.
In early experiments it feels like Inertia.js be this same feeling but for Rails and Laravel.
I never got very far on the Gatsby train. It always felt so slow and fragile during local dev, and while GraphQL was cool it felt like total overkill for most of the data I needed to grab (like… markdown files from disk).
Re: From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
#16if you keep your site on github, i found keystatic to be a really nice authoring experience: https://github.com/Thinkmill/keystatic
Thanks for the link. I prefer the simplicity of .mdx files for now. My use case is very basic and Astro already handles it well.
Re: From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
#17I am still not over the collapse of Gatsby (for reference i nearly joined the company in 2017, was saved only by my own character flaws). They rode the highs - being the default docs tool for React, and building a massive ecosystem of integrations you could install out of the box. But too many abstractions, divided goals between cloud and OSS, and the better stewardship/design of Nextjs brought it down. There were th…
My bet is on Remix (which will eventually just be React Router). I think it's just the right amount of abstraction over native web functionality with a nice, simple API that doesn't deviate too much from web standards. I also think the full stack approach just makes sense for developing on the web.
Re: From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
#18I have heard great things about astro, but my experience with Gatsby keeps me away. I would much rather keep an SSR framework like Remix and handle whatever pipeline is needed myself. No magic.
I felt the same way! But I came around. Take a look at the source code for a component [1]. The .astro format is pretty much just TS, CSS, and HTML. I don't even need React anymore. Way less glue code and dependencies than with Gatsby. There is a configuration file and some abstractions for things like collections, but almost everything is opt-in. [1] https://github.com/jwngr/jwn.gr/blob/master/src/components/b...
It looks great, but that's a DSL I must learn and re-use nowhere else.
Re: From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
#19Cannot use React UI lib with Astro such as Mantine. With Gatsby it was possible. Astro is MPA while Gatsby provided SPA-like navigation. That's why Astro is not really a replacement.
Not a full replacement in all scenarios. But for my personal website with a basic blog, Astro is by far the simpler and more maintainable option. I bet that is true for most people here who maintain their own personal website.
Re: From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
#20This looks lovely! I've been recently working on sth similar: building a custom pipeline from my Obsidian notes into a website (untested.sonnet.io).
I ended up using 11ty because I wanted to stick as close to the web platform as possible, but a part of me wishes I had tried Astro as well. Mainly because I feel that it strikes the right balance when it comes to flexibility and boilerplate. 11ty is lovely, but there was soooo much stuff I had to write from scratch. I feel like it paid off, but it took me much longer than I had hoped.
One surprising side effect: I noticed that the site worked faster online than served from localhost. 5 minutes of digging after I remembered that it's served via HTTP2 w. multiplexing. I'm not even interested in adding a bundler/minify step, just plain CSS/HTML and asset optimisation w. 11ty-image is enough.