Iterating the Website

A quiet rebuild of my personal site: migrating from Jekyll to Astro, improving UX, accessibility, and long-term maintainability.

This isn’t just a relaunch — it’s an iteration. Each cycle refines the foundation: simpler content, leaner structure, more flexibility for what’s next. Small step, meaningful impact.

Leaving Jekyll Behind

Jekyll served me well, but I’d outgrown it. Simple tweaks meant hunting through templates or writing custom Liquid helpers. Plugins added friction, and the toolchain felt dated in modern workflows. It’s still a solid static site generator, but for a lightweight, living portfolio it became too rigid and slow. I wanted less ceremony, more flow.

Why Astro

Astro gave me that flow. Modern, component-based, and static-first — with room for interactivity when needed. Components can be written once and reused without friction. Combined with semantic HTML and Pico.css, it’s a clean, future-proof base that stays out of the way while supporting growth.

Refining Content and UX

This iteration wasn’t only technical. I reworked structure and copy to read cleaner and serve visitors better:

  • A focused Résumé page for professional context and recent projects.
  • A more personal About page as the main entry point for personal stuff.
  • Simplified pages for clarity.
  • Blog highlights up front.
  • Tuned headings and layout for better scan-ability.

Extras That Matter

Quiet improvements that add polish and principle:

  • RSS feed preserved with redirects.
  • Long-term archive for older posts.
  • Better contrast and keyboard navigation.
  • Privacy-friendly analytics via Goatcounter — no cookies, no tracking.

Skills in Motion

This rebuild doubled as a small-scale systems project: planning the migration, designing a component architecture, automating build previews, and enforcing performance budgets. Astro’s flexibility let me lean on TypeScript, tests, and documentation-driven workflows — the same habits I apply in platform and enablement work.

This site isn’t just a portfolio — it’s a living example of progressive, maintainable web design.

Closing

If you’re curious, revisit a post from seven years ago about earlier changes. The progress since then reflects the same mindset: deliberate, iterative, built to last.

If you value thoughtful front-end architecture, progressive enhancement, or pragmatic delivery — let’s talk.

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