Web App Praxis: Build and Learn in Public

What’s Project Flow & Tracker?

• A #BuildInPublic #LearnInPublic platform for open projects to find out about all this in detail and to pretty much flow right and follow your own projects too…
• … running on Astro + Starlight based Jamstack!
• Anyway, at a minimum, I’ll be openly working on all my projects here. Sartre said, publish it or else it dies in a drawer…

Why Astro + Starlight for this particular project?

• Started using Drupal in 2006. Stayed for the Community. Left because did not smell like teen spirit. They didn’t listen to Nedjo, still don’t… down to 3% of the web at last count…
• Java, Ruby on Rails…
• Started Node.js in 2011. Still there, although admiring Deno.
• CouchDB in 2012
• React in 2016
• Next.js, MongoDB in 2017
• Came to WordPress for the CMS and REST API and WPGraphQL in 2019. Blocks! 40% of the web! A durable productive force?
• While WordPress was getting dressed, examined many JavaScript frontend and fullstack frameworks for a few years. All right! Svelte, Solid, Astro, Deno Fresh… the Next and the Nuxt, the Qwik… seeing those leading movements to stick together and share in community, seeing some others drowning in their arrogance…
• Then WordPress 6.1, and 6.2, now 6.5, got all dressed up block by block, api by api, and by design, two of four iterations done, just collaboration and i18n to go. So with some kind of content modeling support, this can be a fine Headless backend for project content creators and on the frontend, whichever JavaScript framework is best suited, to be chosen on a project-by-project basis.
• Wait a minute… WordPress block-based themes and api and React based blocks are a frontend framework… With WordPress I got:
  • Figma-theme.json single source of truth in code
  • With @wordpress/create-block I can quickly scaffold theme-independent custom blocks in React with access to all APIs…
  • …or custom apps in React in the Admin UI
  • With straightforward, easy to use Create Block Theme I got me everything in code as single source of truth for themes, and parts of themes, and global style variations, whatever.
  • Hang Astro or Next or Nuxt or SvelteKit off of the REST API or WPGraphQL and either do frontend apps, or straightforward static site generation.
  • And even in terms of plugins I doubt we’re limited to React … 4 years ago, a Svelte plugin
• But there is this growing complexity on all fronts; also, you have to pay three hundred dollars a year for content types; and then for this and then for the other; and there’s this growing drama that keeps getting weirder every now and then… yes, it’s complicated.
• I want something that has everything I need right now but simpler, and as future-proof as possible; and I want far less drama: a great, truly open-source community, and my content in Markdown and right there in the repo! Content collection meta info defined in JSON and YAML front matter, content maintained in Markdown in the filesystem. Or database, or server-based API (coming soon!): yes, Astro.
• And for this project-based project (yep, I want it to be self-documented right here as just another project)? Let’s customize the documentation website template Starlight (made in Astro to be sure!) in record time!

So that’s what we’re doing here.

Next steps

Update content

Edit src/content/docs/index.mdx to see this page change.

Add new content

Add Markdown or MDX files to src/content/docs to create new pages.

Configure your site

Edit your sidebar and other config in astro.config.mjs.

Read the docs

Learn more in the Starlight Docs.