The problem
I wanted a home for writing and building that would remain easy to own. Content needed to be portable, source could stay private, and the public site needed to be fast and comfortable to read.
The approach
Markdown is the source of the writing. Astro generates the public pages, and Cloudflare serves them as static assets. A private GitHub repository records the source and triggers verified builds when changes are pushed.
The design uses warm colors, quiet typography, and a focused reading column. Appearance follows the reader’s system setting, with explicit light and dark choices available.
The decisions that mattered
- Keep articles static so reading remains available independently of the comments service.
- Apply the same publication rule to article routes, archives, feeds, and the sitemap.
- Keep guest commenting available while offering optional Google sign-in.
- Save comments privately before background screening; uncertain results remain for owner review.
- Use one verified owner identity for moderation and keep reader learning data private to each account.
- Validate the real deployed site as well as the local build.
The result
This site brings together personal writing, a practical blog-building course, and project case studies. The course documents the setup so another person can build their own version from an empty directory.
What I learned
Small details often determine whether a publishing workflow feels trustworthy: preserving email during a DNS migration, confirming which account is signed in, checking the exact deployed commit, and giving failed background work a private recovery path.