Hello World

Every blog starts somewhere. This one starts with a decision not to build a CMS first.

The instinct when starting a new project is to build the infrastructure before writing anything. Set up the database, design the schema, build the editor, wire up the deployment pipeline — and then, finally, maybe write something. The gap between “I have a blog platform” and “I have a blog” turns out to be wider than expected.

This site skips the platform. Posts are Markdown files in a folder. Deploying means pushing to main. There is no admin UI, no database, no API to maintain.

What this actually means

A post looks like this in the filesystem:

src/content/posts/
  hello-world.md
  building-with-astro.md

Each file has a frontmatter block at the top:

---
title: Hello World
date: 2024-01-01
tags: [meta, writing]
---

The rest is plain Markdown. Images go in public/images/. Code gets syntax highlighting automatically. Drafts stay out of the build by setting draft: true.

What gets deferred

No comments, no search, no analytics, no newsletter. Those are fine things to add later, and some of them might never be added. The goal right now is a place to write and a low enough barrier that writing actually happens.

The constraint is the feature.