My dear friend Javier Thomas runs a barbershop in town. I met him about seven or so years ago. He came highly recommended by a friend who was a professional male model, so I gave him a try.
I got a haircut from him, and I guess I’ve never wanted anyone else to cut my hair since then. Javier’s services are even a bit on the pricier side, but the job he does is consistently excellent. It always seems worth it.
The man is a master of his craft as well as a good man of integrity that I look up to.
Anyways, Javier needed a website for his barbershop. I offered him a good price, and he took me up on my offer.
Development
Lately, I’ve made several WordPress sites, and I initially thought about making Javier’s website with this familiar time-tested stack. However, something about that stack seemed wrong to me for Javier’s site. It’s not flexible enough to incorporate content and the layout I had in mind in a pleasing way.
Essentially, the goal of this website is to encourage prospective clients to schedule appointments. I wanted something fast and exciting on the front-end to woo people into scheduling appointments.
I typically use React and Next.js for sites like this, but lately, the buzz on the web is that we should stop using React for projects that don’t need it. It can make simple websites bloated and slow. It should only be used on websites that require a lot of interactivity and state management.
As we all know, a faster site results in better Google ranking, and I wanted my friend to have a very successful and profitable business.
I had heard of Astro for years now. It never struck me as something I needed to learn. I had never touched the framework before, but it was recommended by a friend for a simple site like this. Basically, I just wanted something with components and templating without a huge overhead. I really wanted it to be fast.
So yes, I went with Astro. I had to learn it, but it was very simple to pick up.
I ditched TailwindCSS as well, adopting only custom CSS as well an interesting stack for CSS development I haven’t adopted before.
- SCSS
- PostCSS with Autoprefixer and CSSNano
The Result
It took about three days to make. I found Astro to have excellent DX. I was able to craft a beautiful site with fantastic performance.
It is now live!
Need a website?
Are you or your business in need of a new website – or maybe a full redesign / re-code of your current website? Need a WordPress developer? How about a .NET developer? React? …Astro? I’d love to help.
Feel free to contact me at the link below.