Why I Moved gookkis.com from Laravel to Astro

Until now, gookkis.com ran on Laravel with a PostgreSQL database (Supabase) and an admin panel for writing blog posts and portfolio entries. It worked, but the maintenance effort didn’t match a personal project with limited time to look after it — there was a server, a database, and a Docker container to keep an eye on.

These days I write content by brainstorming with AI and then hand-editing it, so a Markdown-file-plus-git workflow turned out to be a much better fit — no need to open a CMS, just edit a file and push. That’s why this site moved to Astro: a static site, content stored in git, and deploys that are just a build plus a sync to the same server.

What changed:

• No more database or CMS — every post and portfolio item is a Markdown file in src/content.
• No Docker/PHP-FPM for this site anymore — the build output is just static HTML/CSS/JS.
• Still bilingual (ID/EN), now via URLs (/en/...) instead of a session cookie.

If you’re weighing something similar for your own personal site, it’s worth a look.