A new home for my content

First, some context and introductions

Hey! I’m Isaac — Indie Game Dev, Software Engineer, Engineering Manager, and someone who’s been around the tech block for a long time now. I love to make games, build tools, and share what I learn along the way.

Some years ago I decided it was time to have a place to show my work and passion, but it had to be easy to maintain and easy to add new content, so I thought… Wordpress should make things smooth! Right? Right…? Oh boy was I wrong…

So my first try ended up being a super slow page with tons of plugins and spaguetti-nightmare fuel html layout generated mashing up all the code I put between the plugin customizations. It took a lot of effort to make it look good (which honestly I think I managed to accomplish), but the performance was horrible.

A look at my old wordpress site

So I decided it was time for a full rebuild. Not just a face-lift, but a real, from-the-ground-up project that better represent me and my skills.

I still wanted it to be easily maintainable, and I thought “man it would be awesome if I could take my Notion writing, export it as MD and just consume it”… And then I found Astro.

The Tech Stack

Let’s talk tech — because if there’s something I’ve learned, it’s that good tools make a huge difference.

Frontend: Astro + Svelte

I chose Astro as the base for the site. Why? Astro generates static content in all those places where the content is not going to change ever (or in a long time), so it’s lightweight, lightning-fast, and lets me write clean, content-focused pages using my writing from other places — without all the JS bloat or HTML spaghetti nightmare in my layouts anymore.

And for the parts where I need more up-to-date content? Astro has Server Islands, which, when properly cached, efficiently serve content from different sources like APIs.

My live feeds up to date on the home page — YouTube, Bluesky, GitHub and cara

For interactive bits — like the newsletter subscribe widget or the dynamic search — I reached for Svelte. I love how straightforward it is. Just write what you need, no state management fuss. It integrates smoothly with Astro and keeps everything snappy.

Under the hood, Astro uses Vite, which makes the dev experience super smooth and fast. Hot reloads are instant, builds are quick, and debugging is way less painful than with older tools.

Backend: PHP + Symfony

While Astro handles the frontend, I still needed some backend logic — especially for things like the newsletter system I’m working on. For that, I spun up a Symfony API written in PHP. It’s clean, well-structured, and fits like a glove for small APIs with just the right amount of flexibility.

I’m not persisting data there (at least not for now), but it still does a lot: CSRF protection, rate-limiting, and clean forwarding to Mautic’s API (my email marketing platform of choice).

Local run: Docker

This whole thing runs locally in Docker, which makes testing the full flow — from frontend to backend — smooth as hell. I’ve got Mailhog running for email previews, a full PHP + Nginx container for the API, and of course, Astro running in dev mode. It’s fast, it’s isolated, and I can experiment without breaking stuff.

Accessibility & SEO

I firmly believe all content must be easily accessed and navigated by anyone, no matter what. So I tried to reflect this in my web design. I studied screen readers, A11y principles, and used tools like WAVE by WebAIM to double-check everything.

Never have I ever had a score this perfect on Lighthouse. 🥹

SEO Score of my page

Tests and quality of life

As with any serious rebuild, I didn’t just wing it. I added a layer of tests and checks to make sure things hold together as I keep improving stuff. Some are basic, like endpoint validation and CSRF token checks. Others help make sure the Docker services behave the way they should when spinning things up or down.

It’s not about overengineering — just making sure that when something breaks (and it will), I know where to look.

Wrapping it up

This project was a way to get my site back in shape, but also to remind myself why I love building stuff. It’s not about being flashy or trendy — it’s about shipping something that feels right, that does its job, and that I’m proud to point people to.

There’s still a bunch I want to add (and I’ll probably break things along the way), but for now… this feels like home.

Thanks for reading. 🙌