New Astro Site Updates and Plans

'Graphic. Dark blue background. Gradient orange to pink border. Gradient text at top says GingerKiwi.dev. Underneath orange text says New Blog & Portfolio Astro + Next.js + SQLite then there's a row of three emojis separated by two + signs. crossed hammer and wrench, a redheaded woman behind a silver laptop, and a blue wheelchair symbol. Underneath in pink text it says Building in Public Updates'

Nov 27, 2023

Developing a new full-stack site is a multi-step iterative process. The new gingerkiwi.dev site combines a blog with over two years of writing, with a developer portfolio, while adding a ton of new features. Here's some of the details and updates for the new https://GingerKiwi.dev.

This Week:

  • I've started the domain registrars transfer of gingerkiwi.dev (No more GoDaddy! 🥳) . So the site should be deployed on .dev before the end of the week.

  • My web hosting will move from Netlify to Fly.io

  • Email hosting for gingerkiwi.dev is switching from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 Business

  • As of last night, the backend is working. Readers can now like posts. See the article from two days ago about the "The Social Saturday Group Debugging Party".

    Next Steps

  • Fix the layout issues on mobile

  • Refactor the CSS and set custom fonts

  • Get the cover images and their alt text working how I want them too

  • Create subpages for article series such as Motivational Mondays, Quick A11y Tips for Devs, and French for Devs.

  • Write the accessibility statement

  • Add portfolio projects and contact pages

There will be a ton of ongoing work moving all my blog posts from the past 1.5 years and older saved work onto this new site.

A light theme, setting theme to device settings, and some other features will be added in the upcoming months.

The Stack

  • Fullstack Next.js, Astro, React,
  • Tailwind CSS,
  • Drizzle ORM, Better-SQLite
  • Hosted on Fly.io

Features

  • Collections for posts with pages for different topics and article series.
  • RSS feed
  • Improved accessibility features (see details below)
  • Dark and light theme

Accessibility Features

Some of the accessibility features include:

  • skip-to-main-content,
  • in-page links for long articles,
  • fixed the semantic headings issue with posts and logo on gingerkiwi.blog,
  • dark mode
  • Visual and colour indication of links on hover and focus
  • Will be tested with NDVA and MacOS VoiceOver (2024)
  • Accessibility statement page