The experience of using GatsbyJS is a nightmare. Errors are truly impossible to debug. Plug-in documentation is always lacking to the point where I have to read the source. All the integration points are unbelievably complicated. GraphQL is a terrible abstraction layer for a small personal site. It’s lots of great ideas in theory but absolutely awful in practice.
I’m waiting for Astro to be done enough for me to rebuild my site in it so I can deliver a near-zero JS site (other than the theme switcher).
I haven’t liked a static site generator since Metalsmith.
When a static site generator stops being actively maintained you can definitely keep using it but you have to freeze everything from Node.JS to all your dependencies. That’s extremely fine and not a problem at all except I’m a web developer by trade so I want to be trying new things all the time.
What do you need from Astro that’s blocking you from moving to it? I just moved my personal site from NextJS to Astro and I love it. But my site is very simple, just some MDX and React rendered to a blog.
Ahh, my styles are in a plain external stylesheet, so I haven’t run into this problem.
I also REALLY want to be able to collocate images with the mdx file that uses it but this isn’t a deal breaker.
Yeah, I had that pattern in my previous site. With Astro I just adopted a naming convention so that it’s easy to tell which images go with each blog post, given they can’t be co-located. I don’t have many posts, or images, so for me it was an easy change.
I’d installed “Code Spell Checker” on VSCode but it hadn’t enabled. What an embarrassing spelling horror show :) Fixed.
I also dropped back to the default Nikola theme. I liked the ‘soft’ aesthetic of the one I’d picked, but looking awful on mobile is a non starter in so many ways.
This theme looks pretty good on my iPhone!
Thanks again for all the feedback. Super appreciate it.
The experience of using GatsbyJS is a nightmare. Errors are truly impossible to debug. Plug-in documentation is always lacking to the point where I have to read the source. All the integration points are unbelievably complicated. GraphQL is a terrible abstraction layer for a small personal site. It’s lots of great ideas in theory but absolutely awful in practice.
I’m waiting for Astro to be done enough for me to rebuild my site in it so I can deliver a near-zero JS site (other than the theme switcher).
I haven’t liked a static site generator since Metalsmith.
Is metalsmith not an option for you? I’m curious to know why.
I hadn’t heard of metalsmith until this comment. It looks really cool! If I ever need a js static site generator I’ll give it a serious look.
When a static site generator stops being actively maintained you can definitely keep using it but you have to freeze everything from Node.JS to all your dependencies. That’s extremely fine and not a problem at all except I’m a web developer by trade so I want to be trying new things all the time.
Oh wow I spoke too soon, after 5 years it’s back with a maintainer: https://metalsmith.io/news/2022-01-27/metalsmith-is-back/
I’m really enjoying Nikola, but I’m a Python guy so that goes a long way :)
Metalsmith looks really great. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! :)
What do you need from Astro that’s blocking you from moving to it? I just moved my personal site from NextJS to Astro and I love it. But my site is very simple, just some MDX and React rendered to a blog.
I hit some blocking issues last I tried a few months ago, eg https://github.com/withastro/astro/issues/2225. Looks like that one might not be fixed.
I also REALLY want to be able to collocate images with the mdx file that uses it but this isn’t a deal breaker.
It’s almost there for me.
Ahh, my styles are in a plain external stylesheet, so I haven’t run into this problem.
Yeah, I had that pattern in my previous site. With Astro I just adopted a naming convention so that it’s easy to tell which images go with each blog post, given they can’t be co-located. I don’t have many posts, or images, so for me it was an easy change.
Yeah same. The collocation issue didn’t get ported to the RFC process so we’re unlikely to get it: https://github.com/withastro/astro/issues/1618
I think writing the integration code ourself can make debugging a lot easier. I have written a guide on only using vite to statically generate a website: https://github.com/taowen/vite-howto/tree/main/packages/SSR/generate-static-website
Please run a spellcheck on the content. There’s a few words that look like many cosmic rays got them :-)
I was looking in the archive for the reason for the change and found this: https://www.feoh.org/posts/i-love-you-pelican-but-im-struggling.html
Also, the result on Firefox mobile is not great. It’s like some sizing / padding / centring CSS is missing: https://postimg.cc/30hX7Nrm
Thanks for the reports all.
I’d installed “Code Spell Checker” on VSCode but it hadn’t enabled. What an embarrassing spelling horror show :) Fixed.
I also dropped back to the default Nikola theme. I liked the ‘soft’ aesthetic of the one I’d picked, but looking awful on mobile is a non starter in so many ways.
This theme looks pretty good on my iPhone!
Thanks again for all the feedback. Super appreciate it.
I can confirm that the current theme looks good in Firefox for Android. I do see two remaining spelling errors:
Fixed. An important distinction. Thanks for the report.
I’m seeing the same css issues in iOS safari.
Did you intentionally delete the post? I’m seeing a 404 and had to read it on the internet archive.
Nope. Accidentally deleted it fixing the previous javascript -> JavaScript bug report. It’s back now. Pardon the chop.