Why is self-hosting still this painful in 2026?
I tried to set up a clean self-hosted stack this weekend. It was a nightmare. Why is this still so painful in 2026?
Articles
Writing about Astro, the web, and developer experience.
-
-
Astro Docs Gets an MCP Server (And It's Pretty Cool)
Astro now has an official MCP server for its documentation.
-
Why Most Restaurant Websites Suck (and What To Do About It)
A developer's rant about restaurant websites, SEO essentials, and how to fix them
-
SolidJS Devtools with Astro
I found myself in a situation where I wanted to use SolidJS Devtools with Astro. Here's a template to get you started.
-
How I keep everything up to date
Some thoughts on how I keep my projects, dev env and repositories up to date.
-
PandaCSS + Astro startkit
A couple of days ago, I gave a talk together with Sybren about using PandaCSS with Astro at Fronteers in Ghent. It inspired me to build a template.
-
Elians Astro Startkit
I just published the setup I use for my personal projects. You can read more about it in this blogpost.
-
So, I'm leaving vBridge
After spending a couple of years at vBridge Cloud, I'm leaving the company. I've worked at vBridge eversince I graduated. Now, It's time for a new adventure! I'm joining the DX-team at Astro full-time!
-
Becoming an Astro maintainer
Since a week, I'm an Astro maintainer, in this post, I describe the process and my start in open source. I also give some insight in what I'm planning to work on.
-
🍱 Brutal: A theme for Astro
Brutal is a minimal neobrutalist theme for Astro. It's based on Neobrutalist Web Design, a movement that aims to create websites with a minimalistic and functional design. It has some integrations like Image Optimization, RSS, Sitemap, ready to get your SEO done right.
-
🎤 Am I an international public speaker now?
A few weeks ago, I gave my first international keynote talk at JSWorld in Amsterdam. In this blogpost, I wanted to share some insights about the conference and my talk.
-
✨ Building Blog tag index pages in Astro
I wanted to add blog tag collection pages to my website. This way, people could filter on tags I used in my blog posts. Here is a guide on how I implemented it.
-
🎉 I started from scratch (again)
I started rebuilding my personal website from scratch in Astro again, no dependencies, no frameworks, no nothing. This to decrease technical debt and make full use of the newer Astro features.
-
💄 Implementing UnoCSS in Astro
UnoCSS is an atomic-CSS engine, designed with flexibility and performance in mind, I wanted to give it a try. Let's take a look at implementing it in Astro and see how it works.
-
✨ 2022 - my year in recap
2022 was a year that flew by so fast, I've gotten amazing opportunities and a lot of lessons learned. In this post, I put them all in a list.
-
🎤 Optimizing React using Astro
9th of November, I gave a Keynote at React Global Summit. This blog post contains my slides as well as some extra accompanying speaker notes.
-
🎤 Less JavaScript, Faster Website
14th of October, I gave a lightning talk at React Brussels. This blog post contains my slides as well as some extra accompanying speaker notes.
-
♻️ Using Firebase JSON config for redirects
I started out my blog about a year ago, at the time, I didn't really think about a good URL system, which came back biting me in the ass.
-
🚀 Deploying to Firebase using Google Cloudbuild
Deploying to Firebase can sometimes be somewhat of a hassle if you're using the CLI. There is a better way using some sort of CI/CD, Cloudbuild is the example explained here.
-
🚀 Deploying to Firebase using Github actions
Deploying to Firebase can sometimes be somewhat of a hassle if you're using the CLI. There is a better way using some sort of CI/CD, Github actions is one example explained here.
-
✨ Using Bun as JavaScript runtime
Bun is a new runtime for JavaScript & TypeScript, compatible with NodeJS packages and ecosystem.
-
🚀 Deploying Astro on Deno
Astro came out some time ago with a SSR Deno adapter. I never tried it out before, So I thought I should give it a try!
-
📈 Using mostvisitedpages as a serverless function
I've moved from a regular RESTful API to serverless functions. Here is a little guide and explanation on why & how I did that.
-
♻️ Upgrading my website to Astro v1.0
Astro came out with a beta version of the v1.0 release of the framework. I upgraded my website to use that version, since I was still running on v0.24. The following are some of the changes I had to do to get it working.
-
💄 Tailwind CSS in Astro
Since Astro 24, the documentation of Tailwind CSS in Astro has disappeared. Not because it's not supported, but because it now holds true to the Tailwind CSS documentation itself. If you still need a guide on how to use them both, look no further!
-
🎤 Less JavaScript, Faster website - Astro
20th April, I gave a lightning talk at the Full Stack Ghent meetup. This blog post contains my slides as well as some extra accompanying speaker notes.
-
💄 Using Tailwind CLI with Blazor
Last year I wrote an article about using TailwindCSS with Blazor. It was a struggle, since Blazor had to be tricked to install and compile TailwindCSS NodeJS. Now that TailwindCSS launched a new tool, Tailwind CLI, it's time to try it another way!
-
🔍 How I automated SEO to fit my needs
It's been some time since I started writing posts and articles about programming and related. Since the start, I've always invested time in SEO, over time, I have integrated a system that now works for me. This is an explanation how I did that.
-
💄 Use TailwindCSS with Sveltekit (2021)
Earlier this week, Sveltekit beta got released, ofcourse I wanted to fiddle with it.
-
🔧 Set your NodeJS version in Netlify
A couple of times I needed to fix the NodeJS version on a Netlify site, I found myself googling it a couple of times, so this little how-to is basically a note-to-self.
-
🎉 Write less code by using CSS Houdini
Some time ago I started looking into CSS Houdini. Today was finally the day that I wrote a package to replace some of my shitty code with some CSS Houdini magic
-
👽 Use API magic to show your most visited pages
A while ago I had an idea for a feature which would show the most frequent visited pages upon a 'page not found' error. After I let it sit for a while, I realized that this might be possible by using the Google Analytics API. Here's a guide.
-
💄 What's new in TailwindCSS v3
TailwindCSS v3-alpha-1 was released yesterday! It's not a full release of v3 yet, but might already give us an insight on what is to come with TailwindCSS v3.
-
♻️ Using PNPM on Netlify
When I first switched my website over to PNPM instead of Yarn, I noticed that my Netlify build were failing. Here's a guide and solution to everyone having the same issue.
-
✨ Using slots to build layouts in Astro
Coming from frameworks like NuxtJS and NextJS, I always liked the layout feature. It's a quick way to reuse shared components without re-importing them in every page. When I started with Astro, I had no idea that this was also possible.
-
✨ Setting up Nuxt with Pug and Stylus
Nuxt is really cool all by itself but can even be cooler when combined with another templating engine. In this example I'll use Pug and Stylus to fiddle around.
-
📝 Add your blogposts to your Github README
Github profile README's are a very cool and personal way to tell something about yourself. One of the downsides to this is that it depends on a static format. Well, this is not necessarily true. Through the power of code and Github Actions, we can use JavaScript and generate a static file.
-
🥳 Describe your commits using Gitmoji
Describing your commits can be a difficult task. You can write down everything you changed or improved, or you can let the code speak for itself. Gitmoji makes this a whole lot easier by using emoji.
-
🚀 Using Surge.sh to quickly deploy a static site
Deploying a static site is made very easy and free by Surge.sh, in this article I explain how it works, what it is and why you should use it.
-
✨ Moving on from Netlify to Google Cloud
Hosting your website online is one of the basic and required steps to build an online audience. Choosing the right platform to host it, can be a difficult process. In this blogpost I clearify my choice.
-
💄 Adding Google Fonts to your NuxtJS site
I found out that my fonts weren't loading properly, so I searched for an alternative.
-
💄 Writing your own style components with TailwindCSS and Sass
having TailwindCSS classes everywhere in my markup annoys me. That's why I tought of a better way of styling with TailwindCSS
-
⬆️ What does TailwindCSS 2.1 improve?
TailwindCSS 2.1 just got released, but what does it bring and improve?
-
📈 Add custom tracking events to your nuxt site with GA4
Tracking with GA4 can be very useful, here's a little guide on tracking things you find important with custom GA4 events in Nuxt
-
🚀 Deploying a React Native app to netlify
Deploying a mobile application does seem complicated, but Expo makes it very easy!
-
✨ Monetize your content with Coil
Ads are annoying right, Coil adds a new way to get paid for every second spent on your content.
-
💄 Sveltekit with TailwindCSS
Earlier this week, Sveltekit beta got released, ofcourse I wanted to fiddle with it.
-
🚀 Deploying my website to Netlify using Github
I've used github to manage the sourcecode for my website for a long time, github pages came with it. Now I discovered a better way to deploy and host websites.
-
⚡ Add TailwindCSS JIT to your Nuxtjs site
TailwindCSS just came out with a new feature called @tailwindcss/jit. here's how you can add it to your Nuxt site.
-
✨ What is TailwindCSS JIT and how to use it.
TailwindCSS just released a new feature @tailwindcss/jit. In this post I explain what it is and how to use it.
-
📈 Adding tracking to your Nuxt site with GA4
Tracking your users' action on your site can be very helpful, but it isn't always as straightforward
-
💄 Configure TailwindCSS with Blazor
I started a WASM Blazor project and wanted to use TailwindCSS, but it has a lot of configuring to do with it.
-
💫 Adding a custom preloader to your nuxt site
I added a custom preloader to my Nuxt site. It's not that difficult, here's how I did it.
-
💄 Using KonvaJS as canvas with React
I was in need for a HTML canvas that was easily integratable with React or JavaScript, then I found Konva
-
✨ Pairing React-native with TailwindCSS
I wanted to make a react native app with tailwindcss, but couldn't find a template... So I made my own.
-
💄 Tailwind with sass
Found myself struggling with tailwind config with sass preprocessor, so I figured I'd share a solution
-
✨ Using Valet for local PHP development
Valet is a highly configurable MacOs tool for webdevelopment running in the background
-
💄darkmode in TailwindCSS
How to add dark mode support in TailwindCSS
-
🎉 Initial commit
This week I've recreated my website and blog with Nuxt and Bootstrap, in this post I describe how it all came together.