Astro is simply a lovely website framework for content-driven websites - as the advertising says. Why I like it is that it just works - and is very simply organised. I have been using Hugo for a while, and that taught me a lot : but Astro is just so nice. And it’s fast !
Like many others, installation is very simple:
npm create astro@latest
npm run dev
Then you need to think about:
- pages : with an
index.astrofile in their own folder, which becomes the path, this gets you started - components : re-usable components, so you define your layouts once, and then settle down to just writing your pages
- content : for when you have many similar pages and want to write markdown for speed, but have them all render the same way - like a blog.
The last point is what I really like : I can write all my documentation in markdown which is fast and familiar (and so much easier than writing HTML; very portable, too), add a little bit of frontmatter for standard fields and tags …
… and then it just works.
There is really very little to it - the tutorial is excellent, and I found some lovely free themes, including this one, the wonderful Astro-Sphere written by Mark Horn - which was very easy to customise and extend.