I’ve been through many iterations of a personal website and learned many lessons along the way. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to create a visually appealing website that balanced speed with interactivity and a high degree of customization. Here’s the (messy) journey.
Starting with Google Sites
I started with Google Sites. While it’s fast, clean, and SEO-friendly, the customization is quite limited.
Moving to HugoBlox
I then moved to HugoBlox. HugoBlox provides a much higher degree of customization if you know how to code. Their templates are clean and very visually appealing. However, since I’ve shifted to using AI for most of my web development, HugoBlox syntax can be confusing for AI models.
Trying Quarto
I then switched to Quarto. Quarto provides a lot more customization for someone who works in R. I love Quarto, and still use it for a number of projects. However, for a beautiful portfolio website, the customization is also somewhat limited. AI models also have a difficult time understanding Quarto syntax.
Landing on Astro (for now)
That led me to Astro. Astro uses a modern, performance-focused architecture, which makes it extremely fast. Astro is well-established and understood by most AI models. What used to take me hours of tweaking and correcting with only the best AI models, I can now do in Astro with very inexpensive AI models. AI understands Astro much better than it does HugoBlox or Quarto.
What I learned
After all those iterations, I realized the best website isn’t the one with the most features: it’s the one that gives me the freedom to build exactly what I want.
Have you had a similar journey in web development? Feel free to leave a comment below. Thanks for reading!