Describing My Blog Stack
In this post, I’ll share the tech stack behind my blog, detailing why I chose Astro.js, the major libraries I use to enhance its functionality, the specific blog template that has shaped its design, and my choice of Vercel for hosting.
Why I Picked Astro.js
Astro.js is a modern front-end framework that allows you to build fast, optimized websites and applications with less client-side JavaScript. Here are the key reasons I chose Astro.js for my blog:
- Performance: Astro.js outputs minimal JavaScript. This means faster load times, which is crucial for retaining visitors and improving my blog’s SEO.
- Static Site Generation (SSG): Astro.js supports SSG out of the box. This feature allows me to pre-render pages at build time, improving load speed and enabling a better user experience.
- Framework Agnostic: Astro allows the integration of different front-end frameworks within the same project. This flexibility lets me use the strengths of various frameworks when needed.
- SEO Friendly: The performance-centric nature of Astro.js aids in building SEO-friendly websites, enhancing my blog’s visibility.
- Community and Support: The growing community and robust support for Astro.js ensure that I can stay updated with best practices and troubleshoot any issues.
Major Libraries I Picked
I utilize several libraries alongside Astro.js, such as React for dynamic components, Tailwind CSS for styling, Algolia for search functionality, and Markdown-it for content rendering. These libraries enhance my blog’s interactivity, design consistency, and user engagement.
Blog Template
I chose the [Astro-Paper](# Describing My Blog Stack
In this post, I’ll share the tech stack behind my blog, detailing why I chose Astro.js, the major libraries I use to enhance its functionality, the specific blog template that has shaped its design, and my choice of Vercel for hosting.
Why I Picked Astro.js
Astro.js is a modern front-end framework that allows you to build fast, optimized websites and applications with less client-side JavaScript. Here are the key reasons I chose Astro.js for my blog:
- Performance: Astro.js outputs minimal JavaScript. This means faster load times, which is crucial for retaining visitors and improving my blog’s SEO.
- Static Site Generation (SSG): Astro.js supports SSG out of the box. This feature allows me to pre-render pages at build time, improving load speed and enabling a better user experience.
- Framework Agnostic: Astro allows the integration of different front-end frameworks within the same project. This flexibility lets me use the strengths of various frameworks when needed.
- SEO Friendly: The performance-centric nature of Astro.js aids in building SEO-friendly websites, enhancing my blog’s visibility.
- Community and Support: The growing community and robust support for Astro.js ensure that I can stay updated with best practices and troubleshoot any issues.
Major Libraries I Picked
I utilize several libraries alongside Astro.js, such as React for dynamic components, Tailwind CSS for styling, Algolia for search functionality, and Markdown-it for content rendering. These libraries enhance my blog’s interactivity, design consistency, and user engagement.
Blog Template
I chose the astro-paper for its clean, content-focused design and responsive layout, ensuring a great user experience across all devices. This template’s compatibility with Astro.js enables me to leverage the framework’s full potential.
Hosting on Vercel
For hosting, I selected Vercel for several compelling reasons:
- Ease of Deployment: Vercel offers a straightforward deployment process, seamlessly integrated with Git. This simplifies pushing updates and managing the blog.
- Performance Optimization: Vercel is optimized for performance, offering edge functions and global CDN, which ensures fast loading times for my audience worldwide.
- Continuous Integration: Every git push triggers a new deployment, allowing me to maintain a continuous integration workflow effortlessly.
- Custom Domain Support: Vercel makes it easy to connect a custom domain and manage SSL, providing a professional touch to my blog.
- Scalability: As my blog grows, Vercel scales with it, handling increased traffic without requiring manual intervention.
By leveraging Vercel’s hosting capabilities alongside my chosen tech stack, I ensure that my blog is fast, reliable, and always up to date with the latest content. Deploys to production are as simple as merging a commit on my main branch. Vercel was pretty smooth with setting up a custom domain - it was super easy to map and they autogenerated the SSL cert. So much easier than ever before!