The previous version of typeitjs.com was on Gatsby for several years. It was chosen during the framework’s hype days, and had grown in complexity along the way (there was even a great deal of home-grown documentation features in there as well).

After building a few sites with Astro, I pulled the trigger on migrating TypeIt’s site over too. And I’m glad I did. The process was extremely straightforward, and I was able to shed a lot of the poor decisions that had accumulated over time.

On the performance front, things were pretty notable too.

- the total amount of JavaScript dropped by 74%. - total main thread blockage (the amount of time JavaScript is doing something, preventing anything else from occurring) decreased by 90%. - Largest Contentful Paint, one of the Core Web Vitals used by Google to judge the user experience of a page, was cut in half. - the overall performance score jumped by 12 points.

All of this was achieved by sticking with the same overall design and layout. It was really due to getting away from a heavy, React-based static site generator.

If you’re working with a similar type of site and looking to upgrade, rebuild, or migrate, I highly recommend Astro and its Starlight theme. I’ll be using it probably exclusively moving forward.

See the TypeIt site here:

https://typeitjs.com