Yeah… did another redesign.
What I switched to this time is the Astro framework.
Astro is a type of static site generator that allows you to essentially use whatever you want and have it end up being used in a site delivered with the least amount of JavaScript possible.
I would explain it, but honestly the video that got me into using Astro better explains it than I could.
The reason I’m using it is that I was trying to learn Svelte, but honestly the more time passed the more I just kinda used Astro native components and there’s like… zero Svelte in this website. So I basically use it as a static site generator with modern web development principles.
You might be wonder, “Wasn’t Hugo like that, why switch?” With the answer being that I was able to make custom pages without needing to use markdown.
The thing with Hugo is that I couldn’t find a really good way to have multiple html pages that wasn’t the homepage without having to go through making the site from scratch without Hugo’s templating, at least, that’s what I think from looking it up at 1am, but honestly, the want to make a new site that allowed me to more easily just do it without looking it up outweighed my want to do it in Hugo.
So, what are some of the big changes with doing it in Astro compared to doing it in Hugo?
Well for starters, if you look at the bottom of the blog, you’ll notice that the next and previous buttons are missing, this was unfortunatly a compromise I went with because I don’t really know how to do it with Astro, and nothing I can find can really give a good answer that was static only… I think, again, hard to find information on this for me.
Another thing is that on my side, using Markdown is a bit easier, mainly, that I’m using MDX instead of normal Markdown, this allows me to use Javascript in Markdown (if I wanted to), use components in Markdown, or more inmportantly for me, use raw HTML in Markdown.
If you know Markdown, you’d be wondering “Wait, couldn’t you do that last part before?” and with Hugo… no. In Hugo all HTML had to be through shortcodes, which like, wasn’t nessesarily a bad idea, but adding something like a skip button was way more of a hassle compared to just making a div with a id in it and that’s it.
Another advantage is again, the custom HTML pages. If you looked at the DataQuest page, you’ll notice that it’s not just a bunch of under construction gifs anymore, but an actual page with a render and and teaser for when I’m going to finish the first short for DataQuest.
It also allows me to clearly seperate layouts between pages, on the old site, since everything was made using Markdown besides the homepage, every page would have the date, next/previous, title, etc, all that blog stuff in the page, and like, obviously I don’t want blog stuff in a page where I’m using it to tease a web-series I finally have some progress on. So what I did previously was ad a bunch of markdown variables and used those to determine what’s on the page, but that’s bloaty as hell on my end and kinda stupid, but with Astro, I just… make a new page and don’t include the blog layout. It’s that easy now.
Hell, I don’t even need the layouts at all, it could be it’s own page with it’s own layouts and stuff, at most it would just be there and I could switch to it if I want, so what I could od is make more layouts for things like different projects that require different types of layout if I wanted them to have different layouts, it’s just really easy to do that compared to using Hugo that I’m legit happy with this redesign.
The biggest thing with this redesign is that it’s built to be futureproof for me, so that in some time, If I would want to maybe have a layout for like… idk a webcomic or something, I can just… make that. It can have it’s own stylesheet and it can be just… on it’s own.
I had a little thing in the Keyboard post before I redid it completely, that part of the really long sentence it belonged to is:
“-because like me using RPG Maker, I really want more out of this that I just can’t get-”
And that’s simply it, I just wanted more and I am getting more now, and I think that works out to being pretty nice.
R.I.P the Hugo webbutton I made.
