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This is the first iteration of this site. I wanted production ready site in the shortest time possible, so I opted for minimal, black & white design. I was checking out some blog ready web templates, but in the end I decided to design everything by myself.

Simple digits is powered by Astro, which is a modern web framework based on JavaScript. For the actual version, you can check the source code and look for the <meta name="generator"> tag in the page’s <head>.

Static site generators (SSG) like Astro first caught my attention a couple years ago when Jekyll was the most prominent tool and Astro didn't even exist. I played with Jekyll for a while, but eventually got distracted by other projects.

Fast forward to 2023 and SSGs and JAMstack architecture once again began to pique my interest as I planned for this site. I still had my previous blog project on Jekyll (which was very much work in progress), but decided to not use it.

I can not recall having any particular objections toward Jekyll except for one thing - it's written in Go. Since I don't have a clue about Go, I started looking for JavaScript alternatives.

Initially, Eleventy grabbed my attention. However, shortly thereafter, I stumbled upon Astro and settled on it.

In all honesty, I dont have an in-depth understanding of Astro, but I still managed to build this site which I guess is some kind of testament that I made the right choice. I didn't have the time nor mental capacity to learn yet another framework. I wanted something straightforward with minimal configuration that I can get into production in no time.

Astro ticked that box for me, and so far, everything has gone pretty smoothly.

Web core vitals

Typography

After experimenting with numerous typefaces across various styles, I ultimately chose to combine Source Sans 3 as the sans-serif font for headings and the Merriweather serif typeface for the body text.