Building a blog with Astro

Astro

Astro is a Javascript framework that works great for static webpages. If you have npm installed already, creating a project with Astro is as simple as

npm create astro@latest

and then you are off to the races. Just follow the prompts and select the blog template.

Assuming you have a basic understanding of HTML, CSS, and Javascript, setting up a blog with Astro is easy. The first thing you need is to change the index.astro file that will serve as your home page. This is where you will put your blog’s title, subtitle, and any other introductory text. You also get included a navigation bar that links to your other pages.

Next, you will need to create a markdown page for each of your blog posts. Each page is simply written in the commenly used markdown format and placed into your blog folder.

Finally, you will want to customize the CSS to match your blog’s theme. The default CSS is very clean and minimal, so it should be easy to work with.

With just a little bit of effort, you can have a great looking blog up and running in no time with Astro.

Cloudflare Pages

Cloudflare is a free service that allows you to host your website on the cloud. Simply go to https://www.cloudflare.com/ and sign up for a free account. Connect your github to your Cloudflare account and then you are ready to go. You can then go to Pages in the Cloudflare dashboard and deploy your blog. Remember to set the Nodejs version to at least 16.12.0 in the environment variables. Otherwise you will get an error, as Cloudflare defaults to Nodejs 12 and Astro requires at least 16.12.0.

Now everytime you push your code to your github repository, your blog will be updated.