Hi — I’m Hans Martens, an Astro theme developer based in Veghel, the Netherlands, and the creator of Astro Rocket, an open-source Astro theme. If you’ve landed here from Google, a project page, or a link in one of my other posts: welcome. This is the longer story of who I am, how I work, and how building websites since 2010 has led to the site you’re reading right now.
What I do
I design and build free, open-source themes for Astro — end to end, from the first idea to the release, and onwards through every update after it. My flagship is Astro Rocket, a complete starter theme anyone can build a website on.
I deliberately keep design, development, and optimisation in the same head. Every design choice has a code consequence, every technical decision shapes what the design can do, and SEO, performance, and accessibility only work when they’re built in from the start — not patched on at the end. That’s why every part of a theme, from component structure to default config, gets the same attention.
From hobby to open source
What started as a hobby in 2010 has evolved, step by step, into the real thing — and in 2026 it found its true shape: I build and maintain open-source Astro themes. My first theme is out in the world: Astro Rocket, free for anyone to build on, with this website and the Astro Rocket demo site as its living proof — both documented on my projects page.
What hasn’t changed is what drives me: genuine enthusiasm for the craft. I’m not interested in shipping features to hit a target. I’d rather build fewer things and build each one properly — designing it well, building it cleanly, and releasing it carefully. That’s the standard every theme release gets.
How it started — Windows 3.1 and a curious mind
My interest in computers started a long time ago, back when Microsoft introduced Windows 3.1 — that was 1992. What began as curiosity quickly turned into a hobby, and not long after, I was online — getting to know this strange new thing called the internet.
When Windows 95 came out, in 1995, I started working at a PTT Telecom store (today known as KPN), selling the technology of the day: mobile GSM phones, DECT phones, landline phones, fax machines — all of it. It was a great place to be in the middle of a wave of consumer technology arriving in everyone’s home.
By the time Windows 98 launched, in 1998, my fascination with computers had grown big enough that selling phones wasn’t enough. I went to a computer shop, picked out every component I wanted, and built my first PC from parts. Putting that machine together — knowing exactly what was inside it and why — was the moment the hobby clicked into place.
From CompTIA A+ to the TU Eindhoven
To turn the hobby into something more, I took the CompTIA A+ course and started working as a computer service engineer. I was detached at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), where I spent my days repairing laptops for students who’d bought them through the university. Every academic year a new model arrived, so I worked my way through a long line of laptop generations — opening them up, diagnosing what had failed, putting them back together so they worked properly.
That work taught me two things I still rely on every day:
- Nothing on a screen is magic. It’s all just layers you can take apart and understand.
- The difference between working and working well is almost always in the details.
I approach a website the same way I used to approach a broken laptop: open it up, understand every layer, and make sure each one is doing its job.
Building websites since 2010 — from WordPress to Astro
After my years at TU/e I went my own way. In 2010 I built my first website with WordPress — for myself, to see if I could. I liked the building part more than I expected, and just kept going. I never took a course for any of it: everything I know about designing and building websites, I taught myself by doing — every year of it since 2010. Alongside the websites I’ve always done volunteer work, in different roles over the years.
For over a decade, WordPress was my home base, and I got to know the platform inside out: themes, plugins, hosting, and all the ways a WordPress site slowly becomes heavier, slower, and harder to maintain as the years go by.
In 2022 I switched to Astro, and I haven’t looked back. Astro gives me exactly what I want: zero JavaScript by default, full control over the output, and the freedom to add interactivity only where it earns its place. Fast sites aren’t a feature I bolt on at the end — they’re the natural result of building this way.
Knowing both worlds this well shapes the themes I build. Astro Rocket is made to be the place a WordPress site can land — content, blog, SEO, forms, the lot — because twelve years of WordPress, followed by Astro ever since, is exactly the experience that tells me what such a site needs. And I still keep an eye on the WordPress world.
Astro Rocket — my open-source theme
Earlier this year I released Astro Rocket: a free, lightning-fast Astro starter theme to build anything on. At its heart is a complete component library — 57 designed, accessible components that all speak one design language, so whatever you build with them looks right. Around that library sits everything a real website needs: pages to start from, a full blog, dark mode, i18n, search, SEO, and a perfect Lighthouse score, under an MIT licence. Use all of it or only the parts you need — the website you build on it is yours.
It’s listed on the official Astro themes directory, and since its release in April it has picked up 85 stars and 42 forks from developers around the world. The best part is how it evolves: users request enhancements through GitHub issues, we discuss the right solution, and improvements ship within days — all in the open, documented for everyone. The theme gets better with every conversation, and that public issue tracker is the most honest portfolio I have.
This website and Astro Rocket share the same foundation. The theme grew out of hansmartens.dev, and improvements still flow both ways — many of the posts on this blog document how individual parts work, so feel free to dig in.
And there’s more coming: a second free, open-source theme is in the making — growing out of everything Astro Rocket taught me. I’ll share the details when it’s ready; follow along on the blog or GitHub.
Working with AI
I’m deeply interested in AI, and especially in what it means for web design and development. For me it’s not a buzzword — it’s a genuine new collaborator at the desk, and it’s changing how I think about almost every step of building a website.
For my projects I work together with Claude, Anthropic’s AI model. Claude is a thinking partner more than a tool: somewhere to bounce ideas, review structure, sharpen copy, spot edge cases, and catch the things that would otherwise slip past me. It doesn’t replace the craft — it sharpens it. The result is work I’m more confident in, shipped faster, and built more thoroughly than I could alone.
How I like to work
I could fill this section with design principles, but you’d only have my word for it. Look at the work instead: Astro Rocket holds a perfect 100 on Lighthouse — performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO, on mobile and desktop — and its colours are contrast-checked across all twelve themes, in light and dark mode. Holding that score while the theme keeps growing comes down to dozens of small decisions nobody sees: spacing, focus rings, contrast, load order.
That’s the level I want everything I ship to meet — and everything you build on my themes inherits it.
Beyond the screen
I’m not in front of a monitor all day. I run a dual-boot machine with Ubuntu alongside Windows 11 and enjoy the open, community-built side of computing — the Raspberry Pi world included. Away from the keyboard you’ll find me at the gym, enjoying good food and a proper espresso, in a good conversation, or out with my two dogs — who have strong opinions about how much time I should spend outside, and are usually right.
Want to say hi?
If you’d like to talk about the themes, about Astro, or just say hello:
- Email — hello@hansmartens.dev
- GitHub — hansmartensdev
- Or — head to the contact page.
Thanks for stopping by.