I’m now maintaining two separate web projects:

1. A manually-crafted HTML/CSS/JS portfolio.
2. This Astro blog, which leans on static generation and Markdown.

They solve different problems.

When plain HTML wins

For the portfolio, I care about:

• Pixel-level control
• Minimal tooling
• Using it as a CSS playground

A pure HTML site makes sense. Every page is curated and hand-built.

When Astro wins

For a blog, I care about:

• Writing posts in Markdown
• Reusing layouts and components
• Keeping runtime JavaScript close to zero

Astro is perfect for that. The content lives in src/content/blog, layouts live in src/layouts, and Astro glues them together at build time.

I don’t need a SPA framework, client-side routing, or heavy JS to show text and images.

Why this is a good fit for class

From the perspective of this assignment, the Astro blog clearly demonstrates:

• Static generation of many content pages.
• Reuse of layouts and components.
• Minimal client-side JavaScript, since everything is compiled to static HTML and CSS.

Exactly the point the professor was making when talking about static site generators.