Getting Started with Astro: Build Faster Websites

Astro is a revolutionary approach to building websites. Unlike traditional JavaScript frameworks that hydrate an entire page, Astro ships zero JavaScript by default and only hydrates interactive components when needed.

Why Astro?

Modern web development has become increasingly complex. With Astro, you get:

• Zero JS by default — Your pages are pure HTML, CSS, and content
• Framework agnostic — Use React, Vue, Svelte, or none of the above
• Content-first — Built specifically for content-rich sites
• Performance — Lighthouse scores in the 90s out of the box

Key Concepts

Components

Astro components are single-file components with a .astro extension:

---
// Server-side JavaScript
const greeting = 'Hello, World!';
---

<!-- Template -->
<h1>{greeting}</h1>

<style>
  h1 { color: purple; }
</style>

Content Collections

Content collections give you type-safe frontmatter for your Markdown files:

import { defineCollection, z } from 'astro:content';

const blog = defineCollection({
  schema: z.object({
    title: z.string(),
    pubDate: z.coerce.date(),
    tags: z.array(z.string()).default([]),
  }),
});

Getting Started

Install Astro and use the official blog starter template:

npm create astro@latest my-blog -- --template blog

That’s it! You’ll have a fully functional blog ready to customize.

Performance Benefits

Because Astro ships no JavaScript by default, your Core Web Vitals will be excellent:

Metric	Score
Performance	99
Accessibility	100
Best Practices	100
SEO	100

Start building your blog with Astro today — your readers (and Google) will thank you.