I wanted a personal blog that was more flexible than a hosted writing platform. The main requirement was simple: most posts should be easy to write in Markdown, but the site should still leave room for custom pages, JavaScript experiments, notebooks, and future interactive work.

The stack I chose is:

• Astro for the site framework
• GitHub for source control
• Cloudflare Pages for hosting and automatic deployment

This post documents the basic setup.

Why Astro

Astro is a good fit for a technical personal blog because it starts from content. Markdown is treated as a first-class format, while .astro pages and components give enough flexibility for custom layouts and interactive sections.

For this blog, Astro gives me a clean path for:

• Markdown posts
• custom HTML pages
• JavaScript snippets
• future MDX components
• future notebook embeds
• static output that is easy to host

The important part is that Astro can stay simple at the beginning. I do not need to design the full system before publishing the first post.

Step 1: Create the Astro project

I started with the Astro blog template:

npm create astro@latest s2p2blog
cd s2p2blog
npm run dev

The blog template creates the basic structure for posts, layouts, and routes. That means I can begin by editing existing files instead of building the whole blog structure from scratch.

Step 2: Create a GitHub repository

The repository is named:

s2p2blog

After creating the repository on GitHub, I connected my local project:

git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial Astro blog"
git branch -M main
git remote add origin https://github.com/S2P2/s2p2blog.git
git push -u origin main

GitHub is not the hosting layer here. It is the source of truth for the project. Cloudflare Pages watches the repository and deploys changes whenever I push to main.

Step 3: Connect Cloudflare Pages

In Cloudflare, I used the Pages flow, not the Worker flow:

Workers & Pages → Create → Pages → Import an existing Git repository

Then I selected:

S2P2/s2p2blog

The key build settings were:

Framework preset: Astro
Build command: npm run build
Build output directory: dist

One easy mistake is choosing the Worker deployment flow. If the screen asks for a deploy command like npx wrangler deploy, that is not the right path for a basic Astro static blog. For this setup, Cloudflare Pages should build the site and publish the generated dist folder.

Step 4: Use the free Pages URL

Cloudflare Pages gives the project a free subdomain:

https://s2p2blog.pages.dev/

A custom domain can come later. It is not required to start writing.

Step 5: Publish updates

The publishing loop is now straightforward:

npm run dev

Edit locally, then publish:

git add .
git commit -m "Update blog"
git push

Cloudflare Pages automatically rebuilds and redeploys the site after each push.

What this stack gives me

This setup is small, but it leaves room to grow. The first version can stay as a normal Markdown blog. Later, I can add MDX, custom components, notebook exports, Marimo embeds, theme controls, or JavaScript demos without migrating to a different platform.

That is the main reason I chose this stack: it starts simple, but does not trap the blog inside a fixed publishing system.