Because I can lol ;)
Jokes aside, though, the previous three versions of my website from 2023 until now have all been made in Webflow. And despite this move, I still maintain Webflow is an extremely powerful no-code tool for designers looking to ship production-ready websites.
In the interest of innovating (and saving on Webflow’s pricey annual platform and hosting fees), I wanted to see how a vibe-coded recreation of my current site might look built in Astro instead.
Unlike the previous two revamps, this wasn’t going to be a fundamental rethink of the UX; the previous version from 2025 was already pretty good for what I need this site to do. But there was room to add some polish. So, while this site will feel familiar to anyone who used that old one, there are a few notable improvements:
- Around the website, visual elements have been made a little bit prettier. Rim lighting on glass buttons, blog banners progressively blur and fade into the content background, and type/image has been tightened and made more consistent
- The blurs on the blog post list have switched to pre-computed blurs, significantly improving performance when browsing blog posts. This saves the browser rendering engine between 6 and 10 blur renders per blog posts which adds up quickly and wasn’t going to be scalable.
- There are animations across the website, from an improved ‘More’ menu to animated blog post opening and closing.
- Migration to Vercel hosting and Sanity CMS should save me hundreds every year while also making it easier to write posts on-the-go!
- Comments are finally available on posts thanks to giscus integration! Thanks to kube.io for the inspiration.
- Reading time is automatically generated for each post.
- Better site structure: the blog is now at blog.yuvs0.com. Projects are at projects.yuvs0.com.
- oh, and the website finally has a native DARK MODE!! It adapts its theme based on your device’s settings.
No doubt there will be modifications to the site in coming months. I’m looking forward to the new possibilities with this self-managed, fully custom architecture. If you have any ideas for features or integrations, please suggest them below!
Till the next one ;)
- Yuvraj