How I built this dev blog

I wanted a blog that didn’t feel like a chore to maintain. No heavy databases, no complex CSS frameworks, and definitely no slow build times.

Here is how I put this site together using ABC Stack.

The “ABC” Stack

Astro + Bun + Cloudflare

• Astro: The “Content Layer” in Astro 5 is a game changer. It treats Markdown files like a local database.
• Bun: I used Bun as the runtime and package manager. It’s significantly faster than Node.js and handles npm packages natively.
• Cloudflare Pages: It’s free, it’s fast, and it deploys automatically when I push to GitHub.

1. Starting with Bun

Instead of the usual npm init, I started with Bun. It feels snappier.

# https://bun.com/docs/guides/ecosystem/astro
bun create astro

I chose the “Empty” template because I wanted to understand every line of code in my project.

2. Organizing Content

In Astro 5, you define your content structure in a content.config.ts file. This gives you TypeScript autocompletion for your Markdown frontmatter. If I forget to add a date to a post, the build fails which is exactly what I want.

3. The “Orange & Zinc” Look

I didn’t want to spend hours on CSS. I went with a “Classless-ish” approach. I defined three main colors in a global layout:

• Background: A deep Zinc grey (#18181b)
• Accent: A light, sunset orange (#fb923c)
• Text: A soft off-white (#e4e4e7)

By styling the HTML tags directly (like h1, p, and a) inside the layout, the Markdown content styles itself automatically.

4. Code Highlighting

As a dev blog, code needs to look good. Astro has Shiki built-in. I set the theme to vesper in the config because it matches the orange/grey aesthetic perfectly.

// astro.config.mjs
export default defineConfig({
  markdown: {
    shikiConfig: {
      theme: "vesper",
      wrap: true,
    },
  },
});

5. Deploying to the Edge

Deploying to Cloudflare Pages was the easiest part.

1. Push the code to GitHub.
2. Connect the repo to Cloudflare.
3. Set the build command to bun run build.

Now, every time I save a Markdown file and push it, the site updates in about 30 seconds.

Final Thoughts

This setup is perfect if you just want to write. There’s no “technical debt” here. If I want to change the look, I edit one CSS file. If I want to write a post, I create one Markdown file.

Simple.