Getting Started with Astro: Building Fast Websites
- John Doe
- Tutorials , Web Development
- 09 Mar, 2025
Getting Started with Astro
Astro is a modern static site generator that lets you build lightning-fast websites with any framework you want. It's designed to ship less JavaScript to the browser, making your sites faster by default.
Why Choose Astro?
- Performance: Astro websites are incredibly fast because they ship zero JavaScript by default
- Flexible: Use React, Vue, Svelte, or any other framework you prefer
- Easy to Learn: If you know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you can build with Astro
- Content-focused: Built-in support for Markdown, MDX, and content collections
Setting Up Your First Astro Project
Getting started with Astro is straightforward:
# Create a new project with npm
npm create astro@latest my-astro-project
# Or with yarn
yarn create astro my-astro-project
Once your project is created, you can start the development server:
cd my-astro-project
npm run dev
Building Pages
In Astro, pages are just .astro files in your src/pages directory. Each page automatically becomes a route on your site.
Here's a simple example:
---
// This is the frontmatter section
const pageTitle = "My First Astro Page";
---
<html>
<head>
<title>{pageTitle}</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>{pageTitle}</h1>
<p>Welcome to my Astro site!</p>
</body>
</html>
Conclusion
Astro makes it easy to build fast websites without sacrificing developer experience. Its island architecture gives you the best of both worlds: the performance of static HTML with the interactivity of JavaScript when you need it.
Start building with Astro today and see the difference it makes in your site's performance!