Working on the blog repository

After the deployment workflow started to take shape, I spent time on the blog repository itself. The goal was to move it away from a static experiment and toward a site that can hold real writing, technical notes, and portfolio work.

The stack is deliberately modest: Astro, Markdown/MDX content collections, English and Dutch routes, RSS, search, and a small set of layout components. That is enough structure for a personal site as long as the content model stays clear.

What I wanted the repository to become

I do not want this blog to be only a feed of posts. I want it to hold several kinds of material:

• short technical notes,
• homelab documentation,
• game development and modding writeups,
• portfolio project pages,
• and reference pages that can keep improving over time.

That pushed the repository toward two main content collections: posts and projects. Posts are dated notes and updates. Projects are longer portfolio entries that describe a body of work, the tools behind it, and the outcome.

Bilingual content as a first-class requirement

The repository is bilingual by design. English and Dutch content live in separate locale folders, and related entries share a translationKey.

That shared key matters because the two versions do not need to be identical line by line. They need to cover the same facts while reading naturally in each language.

Posts and projects

The split between posts and projects is useful because the pages have different jobs.

A post can be narrow. It can explain a deployment change, a design decision, a refactor, or a current status update. A project page needs to be more complete. It should explain context, role, tools, links, outcome, and what the work represents.

That distinction already helps with the Ravenfield material. Reclamation Eden, the Warhammer 40K work, and the broader modding history fit better as project entries than as ordinary blog posts.

Search, RSS, and browsing

I also wanted the site to stay usable once the content grows. RSS gives posts a normal publishing surface. Search makes the site more useful as a small knowledge base. Tags connect posts and projects without forcing a heavy taxonomy.

Those systems are easier to add early, before the site has a large backlog of content.

Result

This phase made the blog feel more like a maintainable publishing system. It gave me a clearer place for different kinds of writing and set up the later work: publishing controls, visual design, prompt-based content workflows, and portfolio media.