Rebuilding My Website from the Ground Up

I’ve been contemplating a complete overhaul of my old website for quite a while, but I never quite got around to it. The whole endeavor felt rather daunting. I kept convincing myself that’s what social media platforms are for – a convenient way to share content with others.

It wasn’t until I ventured into a new business with friends: a climbing gym(more on that in a future post…), that the idea of revamping my website resurfaced. Given that our gym is just getting off the ground, we’re carefully considering how to make the most of our limited capital.

That’s when it hit me – why not create the gym’s website as well? It seemed like an exciting project. As I delved into planning, I couldn’t help but revisit the notion of updating my own site. The real challenge, however, isn’t the technical aspect of building it; it’s figuring out what content to include that’s proving to be a bit tricky. 🤣 While I’ve worked on front-end sites in the past, they were usually based on client requirements that I didn’t particularly care about.

Looking for the right toolkit for the job. Hello Houston!

I was initially considering of using Nextjs but I figured that it would be too tedious not only for the initial setup, but also for future maintenance.

In the end, I settled on Astro, as I only need a few pages for my site. I’m drawn to the elegance and simplicity of Astro’s framework. It feels like a return to a simpler time in web development. I appreciate how it automatically generates routes for each page and its intuitive, component-based architecture. The ViewTransition, though, strikes me as a bit unwieldy, although that’s more a characteristic of the API in general, not just Astro.

Now that my site is back online, I’m planning to stick with Astro for a while. I’ll also be using it to build the gym’s website. Exciting times ahead!