Oh no, yet another post about how I’m rebuilding my site. This time, I’m going to be more transparent about the process and what I’m doing. The reality of the situation is that I’m not happy with the current state of my site. It’s a mix of old and new, and I want to bring it all up to date.

How did we get here?

I started this blog in 2013, and it was a simple Octopress site. I was happy with it, but I wanted to try something new. I moved to Jekyll in 2016, and I’ve been using it (sproadically) ever since. The site has gone through many iterations, but I’ve never been happy with the design. I’ve always wanted to make it more modern and clean in both CSS and toolchain. I’ve also wanted to make it more accessible and performant.

A couple of months ago, I had the urge to write more, but I didn’t want to do it on my current site. I wanted to start fresh and build something that fit my mode of writing. Even trying to run the current site was a pain. Ruby has always been a pain to setup, and I wanted to move to something more portable.

What’s the plan?

I started looking at different static site generators and frameworks, and I decided to go with Astro. I like the idea of using React-like syntax while having the ability to use Markdown for content. I also like the idea of having a single file for each page, which makes it easier to manage.

I’m going to be working on this site in my free time, so it’s going to take a while. I’m going to be working on it in stages, and I’m going to be documenting the process here. I’m going to be using this site as a testbed for new ideas and technologies, so things might look funky from time to time.

What’s done so far?

• Setup Astro
• Migrate content from Jekyll syntax
• Setup CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions
• Move from AWS S3 + CloudFront to Cloudflare Pages
• Modernize CSS with Grids and Flexbox
• Add RSS feed
• Use Iosevka font for code blocks
• Redirect old URLs to new ones
• Add Webmentions

What new features are coming?

• More Webmention support for comments¹
• Dark mode support with modern techniques for toggling²
• Updated fonts³
• Article anchors/footnote support⁴
• Updated content and more posts!

There’s a lot more to come, and I’m excited to share it with you. If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to reach out to me on Mastodon.