A new web

I finally got marcelofelix.com.

I have used different domains over the years, but this is the one I always wanted for my personal site, and it was finally available. It is a good chance to clean up the stack too. My old site was running with Namecheap, Jekyll, and GitHub Pages. It was stable, simple, and good enough for a long time, but it also started to feel limited.

The goal for the new site is still simple:

• keep the site static
• keep writing in Markdown, plain text is the best
• no CMS, git, a terminal, and Vim are enough
• keep automatic deploys
• add custom JavaScript only when it is useful

Domain

This part is straightforward. Namecheap worked well for me before, but Cloudflare is now a better fit for this domain because it is cheaper and I already use it for other homelab-related features.

Porkbun would also be a good option. It is a registrar with simple domain management and useful bundled features. I just prefer to keep this domain close to the rest of the Cloudflare setup.

Hosting

The main hosting options were GitHub Pages, Netlify, and Cloudflare Pages.

I used GitHub Pages before, and it is still the easiest option when the source is already on GitHub. It has a native workflow and works very well for simple Jekyll sites. The tradeoff is that it is more limited when the site moves away from plain Jekyll or needs more custom build behavior.

Netlify is still a strong option for static sites. Its previews and review flow make it easy to test changes before publishing.

Cloudflare Pages is the best fit for me. It gives me static hosting, preview deploys, custom domains, a fast CDN, and a path to Workers later if I need small dynamic features.

Static site generator

I used Jekyll because it was the native GitHub Pages path. It still works, but I wanted to try something with better performance, a larger modern ecosystem, and more room for interactive pages when I need them.

The main options were Hugo, Eleventy, and Astro.

Hugo is very fast and developer friendly, but its template system is a bigger change from my current workflow.

Eleventy is simple and close to the Markdown-first approach I already like. It would probably be the easiest migration if I wanted to keep the old structure with small changes.

Astro is the choice for this version. It has a large community, good performance, many themes, and a simple way to add JavaScript only where the page needs it.

The stack

The new public site lives in marcelofelix. It is an Astro site deployed with Cloudflare Pages.

The site repo stays close to plain files:

• Markdown for posts
• TOML for site and profile data
• GitHub for source history
• Cloudflare Pages for deployment

That is enough for now. The theme details deserve their own post.