Getting Started with Astro

I’ve been looking for the right tool to build a personal blog — something fast, simple, and that lets me write in Markdown without fighting a framework. Astro checked every box.

Why Astro?

Astro ships zero JavaScript by default. For a blog that’s mostly text, this means pages load instantly. No hydration, no bundle overhead, just HTML and CSS.

Other things I liked:

• File-based routing — drop a .md file in pages/posts/ and it becomes a page
• Component islands — if I ever need interactivity, I can add it per-component without bloating the rest
• Familiar syntax — .astro files feel like HTML with a script block at the top

The setup

The entire blog is a handful of files:

src/
  layouts/
    BaseLayout.astro
    PostLayout.astro
  pages/
    index.astro
    blog.astro
    posts/
      getting-started-with-astro.md

Each post is a Markdown file with frontmatter for the title, date, and description. The layout handles everything else.

What’s next

I plan to keep this minimal. No analytics, no comment system, no dark mode toggle — just words on a page. If I need something later, Astro makes it easy to add incrementally.