Writing on Astro, web design, development, performance, and my Astro Rocket theme.
The longer story of Hans Martens — freelance Astro developer in Veghel: 16 self-taught years of building websites, from WordPress to Astro, and the open-source Astro Rocket theme.
How building my own website turned into Astro Rocket — a free, open-source Astro theme in the official Astro directory — and what that says about how I build.
Astro vs WordPress, compared honestly — performance, security, maintenance, editing, and cost. When a fresh Astro build wins, and when a CMS is still the right call.
Why Claude Code — running on Fable 5 — has become the coding partner I reach for on every Astro build. What it is, how I actually use it, and where it earns its keep.
Core Web Vitals explained in 2026 — what LCP, INP, and CLS measure, the thresholds Google uses, and how I improve Core Web Vitals on every Astro build.
How I built a passwordless client portal with Astro, Moneybird and Resend — magic-link sign-in, live invoices, project status from Markdown files, and no database anywhere.
A plain-language guide to Google's Lighthouse report: what the four scores measure, how to test any website in thirty seconds, and why the sites I build score 100 across the board.
Why Astro is the only web framework I reach for. What it is, how it works, and why it quietly changed how I think about building fast, calm, well-made websites.