This Portfolio Site
Context
A static portfolio was needed where content (projects, posts) is edited in Markdown rather than component markup. Hosting is GitHub Pages as a user site (repository NikitaBoyarkin.github.io, served from the domain root). Deploy is push-triggered, with no manual build.
Hypothesis
If we take Astro with content collections and a Zod frontmatter schema, content and presentation separate: new projects/posts are a new .md file, with no component edits. The base path and meta tags (OG, JSON-LD, sitemap, RSS) are configured once.
Data & Method
Stack: Astro 7, TypeScript, Markdown content collections (src/content/{projects,posts}/), Zod schemas in src/content/config.ts.
Architecture:
- Content collections — each project/post = Markdown + frontmatter; Zod validates fields at build.
- Base path —
withBase()fromsrc/lib/path.tsappliesbaseto all internal links and images (the site now serves from the root,base: '/'). - Theme — an inline
<head>script readslocalStorage/prefers-color-schemeand setsdata-themebefore first paint (no flash); CSS custom properties are reactive. - SEO —
sitemap.xml,robots.txt,rss.xml, JSON-LD, OG/Twitter meta, canonical. - Deploy — GitHub Actions builds
dist/and publishes to Pages on push tomaster.
Validation: scripts/check_site.py checks required pages, internal links, the profile image, and assets in index.html.
Findings
Astro content collections with Zod are a contract between content and presentation: invalid frontmatter breaks the build, not the deploy. withBase() encapsulates the GitHub Pages base path — no link hardcodes the base. The “content = .md, presentation = .astro” split means adding a project requires no code changes.
Impact
- Astro 7 + TypeScript + Markdown content collections — content edited in
.md, validated by Zod. - Dark/light theme without flash — inline script before first paint.
- Full SEO — RSS, sitemap, robots, JSON-LD, OG/Twitter meta, canonical.
- Base-path-aware URLs —
withBase()for GitHub Pages, no hardcoding.