Moving from Next.js to Astro

This site has been through some frameworks. WordPress back in 2009, then Gatsby, then Next.js and now Astro. I like to learn new things and I like the right tool for the job.

Why leave Next.js?

Don’t get me wrong Next.js is a great framework. I have used it a lot for both personal and client projects. But for this site it’s overkill.

This is a blog. MDX posts, no API routes, no server-side rendering. Everything is getStaticProps and getStaticPaths. Yet I’m shipping a full React runtime and running a Node.js server in Docker on Digital Ocean. For static HTML. Come on.

I have been on the Pages Router which is now maintenance mode. The App Router is the future but migrating to that would be a big effort and for what? Same overkill for a blog.

And honestly this is a pattern with Next.js that frustrates me. They build something, ship it half finished and then run to the next shiny thing. Pages Router never felt complete before they went all in on App Router. next export was barely functional. And don’t get me started on the Image component — constant pain if you’re not on Vercel. It always felt like they pushed you into the Vercel ecosystem to get things working. Things got better over time sure but it was never painless.

Hard to invest in a framework when the thing you build on might be left behind for the next big idea.

Why not stick with React?

React is fine I have nothing against it. But I have moved away from it. I mostly work with Laravel and Statamic CMS now and I enjoy it. When you don’t have a client or employer pushing you to keep up with the React ecosystem it’s nice to just use what you’re comfortable with and explore other things.

I could have built this in Statamic since I run it for other projects but that’s overkill too. A full CMS with a control panel for 17 blog posts? Nah.

So why Astro?

Astro is built for content sites. Ships zero JavaScript by default. You only add JS when you actually need interactivity which for a blog is pretty much never.

Content Collections is great — built-in support for blog posts with typed frontmatter. No more messing around with gray-matter and next-mdx-remote. MDX works out of the box. And .astro files feel like a mix of JSX and HTML so if you know React you pick it up fast.

But the biggest thing — the output is just static files. No Node.js server. No Docker. Just HTML and CSS.

Bye bye Docker

I have written a couple posts about my Docker and GitHub Actions setup and even debugged a weird .next directory issue in that pipeline. I learned a lot from it and it served me well.

But maintaining a Dockerfile, a Node.js server and deploy scripts for a blog is just too much. With Astro I get plain HTML files that I deploy through Laravel Forge like all my other sites. No special treatment.

I’m starting to get old. Things should just work. It’s like when you were younger and bought components to build your own computer — now I just buy a MacBook because I know it works and syncs with all my other stuff. Same thing here.

The migration

Pretty smooth actually.

Rewrote the layout to an Astro layout — same HTML just without React. Moved the MDX files into Content Collections, frontmatter stayed the same. Tailwind works the same way. Dark mode went from next-themes to a small inline script which is simpler and doesn’t need React.

Things I don’t miss: next-remote-watch, next-mdx-remote, Docker multi-stage builds and the general heaviness of it all.

If you have a content site on Next.js and you don’t really need React on the client — check out Astro. It’s been a breath of fresh air.

Source code as always on github.com/jarnesjo/jarnesjo.com.