New website, built with Astro

It’s that time again … I’ve redesigned my website and launched it today!

This time it’s not just a new WordPress theme, but I rebuilt the whole site from scratch using the Astro framework. It’s been a delight, because I can use the programming languages and tooling I’m most comfortable with (TypeScript, Markdown, VS Code, Node/npm, Netlify), and the site is now statically generated which makes it faster and safer than before. And, I feel way more in control about how the content and data is processed and displayed.

Since I was redoing the whole website anyway, I also wanted to try out a new layout and overall structure (for now, the structure is mostly copied over from the old site, to start with a gradual migration towards the new world). In general, I am very influenced by other websites from the small web movement, that are organized as a digital garden, rather than a classic blog or portfolio website.

Here are some examples of websites that influenced the new design:

• https://lmnt.me/
• https://eva.town/
• https://binarydigit.city/
• https://www.village.one/
• https://matthewstrom.com/
• https://jmduke.com/
• https://100r.co/

Future plans

My plan is to migrate some blog posts into their respective project pages, and have a thriving digital garden that I can update on a smaller scale, rather than a blog with (daunting) aspirations to write long-form content.

Other plans:

• Release the website code as open source: https://github.com/herrherrmann/herrherrmann-2025
• Add some more features to the blog
• Host my music for download here again
• Add list of concerts I’ve attended
• Showcase more of my photos, maybe even entire albums/collections
• Join a webring

I hope you enjoy the new website! Feedback is very welcome, by the way.
And, as always: thanks for your visit! 🎵