Use Astro for your personal or portfolio website
Tags: webdev, astro, javascript
Published: 2023-11-12 04:02:50

---
title: Use Astro for your personal or portfolio website
published: true
description: I built my new portfolio website and you should too!
tags: webdev, astro, javascript
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/k6rnhlafycaqskgx2200.png
# Use a ratio of 100:42 for best results.
# published_at: 2023-11-12 03:45 +0000
series: My personal Astro website
---

## TL:DR

- Astro is a fantastic framework.
- It is super easy to get up and running.
- It has fantastic templates.
- Vercel makes it simple to deploy.
- You should use it for your next portfolio, blog, etc.
- Look at my website here: <https://www.craigaholliday.com/>

## What I needed

Long story short: I was laid off and needed a new personal website.

Most of my work is under NDA and also not publicly available.

For my website, I needed something more like a blog than a traditional portfolio website.

However, like other portfolio websites, the site still needed to look decent.

## What I did

I picked Astro because I've heard great things about it, and it was something new to try.

I already [built a blog website with Gatsby](https://koalatea.io/), and it worked great. However, it is always good to try new things.

So, I went to the [Astro website](https://astro.build/) to read through some of the docs and showcases.

Astro has a great set of [starter themes](https://astro.build/themes/) you can pick from.

Among the themes was an [excellent minimal theme](https://astro.build/themes/details/astro-cactus/), which you can copy as a template to a new GitHub repo. The readme for the repo covers how.

After copying the repo template, I:

1. Change a few variables in the site configurations.
2. Made some minor changes to the CSS and a few small design tweaks
3. Added the information for all the projects I have worked on for the last four years

Finally, the website was done, and I could deploy it.

The obvious choice to do this was with Vercel, which was as easy as signing up for an account and pointing Vercel to my repo.

That's it!

*Honestly, what took me the longest was writing the details for all of my projects. The rest was quick and easy.*

## What is in my portfolio

Instead of traditional portfolios with links to apps, screenshots, etc, my portfolio has the ~14 projects I have worked on for the past four years.

My work is not publicly available, so this is my solution: a lot of text about the problems I solved and how.

It feels very different from what others show, which can be good or bad.

This is what I have because of my contracting work and working on a B2B product that was private.

Let me know how you like it!

## Hire me

Finally, I did not make this post to only share an easy way to make a portfolio.

I also made this post to shill for myself.

I am actively looking for my next job and would love some help. The job search scene is brutal right now.

I am a senior-level generalist software engineer with management experience. All of my projects go into detail on what I've done previously.

I love working with great people on great products and am independent of specific platforms, frameworks, or technology.

I appreciate sharing this post, my portfolio, LinkedIn, and website with anyone who needs my skillset!

Website: <https://www.craigaholliday.com/>

LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigaholliday/>

Email: hello@craigaholliday.com