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Building a Self-Hosted Blog with Astro

Building a Self-Hosted Blog with Astro

One of my first projects was setting up this very blog you’re reading. Let me share the technical decisions behind it and why I chose this particular stack.

The Tech Stack

After researching various options, I settled on:

  • Astro: A modern static site generator perfect for content-focused websites
  • Coolify: Self-hosted PaaS for deployment
  • Umami: Privacy-focused, self-hosted analytics
  • Markdown: For all content, stored in Git

Why Astro?

Astro stood out for several reasons:

  1. Performance: Ships zero JavaScript by default
  2. Flexibility: Write content in Markdown, but can use any UI framework when needed
  3. Developer Experience: Fast builds, hot reload, TypeScript support
  4. SEO-Friendly: Server-rendered by default

Self-Hosting Advantages

While platforms like Medium or WordPress.com are convenient, self-hosting gives me:

  • Complete control over my content and data
  • No platform lock-in - I own everything
  • Learning opportunity to understand the full stack
  • Cost efficiency for a personal blog
  • Privacy for my readers

Analytics with Umami

Instead of Google Analytics, I chose Umami because:

  • It’s open-source and self-hosted
  • Privacy-focused (no cookies, GDPR compliant)
  • Lightweight and fast
  • Simple, clean interface
  • Provides the metrics I need without overwhelming data

The Migration Plan

Starting with self-hosting is great, but I’ve also planned for growth. If traffic increases significantly, my migration path includes:

  1. Phase 1 (Current): Self-hosted on Proxmox LXC
  2. Phase 2 (10k+ monthly visitors): Move to a VPS with better resources
  3. Phase 3 (50k+ monthly visitors): Consider CDN integration
  4. Phase 4 (100k+ monthly visitors): Evaluate managed hosting or edge computing

The beauty of using Astro and standard tools is that migration is straightforward - it’s just static files and a build process.

Continuous Deployment

I’ve set up GitHub Actions to automatically deploy when I push to the main branch. This means I can write in Markdown, commit, and the site updates automatically.

Conclusion

This setup gives me the perfect balance of control, performance, and simplicity. It’s ideal for a personal blog that may grow over time, with a clear path forward for scaling.

If you’re interested in the technical details or want to set up something similar, feel free to reach out!