As fall quickly approaches it is time to check in on what I am currently working on and learning about.
This Website
This site is built with Astro: a relatively new static site generator. I spent some time experimenting with Astro before building this site, but never built a complete site with it. So far my experience has been mostly positive but I have run into a few issues along the way. Version 1.0 was released only a month ago, and the project is already up to version 1.2.1, so I can accept these issues as an early adopter.
GitHub
Even though I have used GitHub for years there are still many features that I have not worked with before. I recently learned how to:
- Host this website on GitHub Pages with a custom domain name
- Configure a GitHub Action to deploy changes when commits are pushed
- Automatically link commits in issue comments
- Set branch protection rules to prevent commits directly to main branch
Markdown
Markdown is implemented in seemingly everything I am interested in these days. Obsidian - a personal knowledge base (second brain) application that I recently started using - stores all of its files in Markdown. Astro uses Markdown and MDX to create pages like the one you’re on right now.
I already knew the basics of Markdown - like formatting headings and adding links to text - but never needed to use the more advanced features. For example, my blog post on Sass Variables in Astro Components uses footnotes. The ability to put the footnote anywhere in the file is convenient, but I can’t decide whether or not I like breaking up the flow of the content. Thankfully the output on the blog post won’t change if I decide to move all of the footnotes to the bottom of the file.