Getting Started with Astro

Welcome to the first part of our comprehensive Astro tutorial series! In this series, we’ll take you from complete beginner to building production-ready websites with Astro.

What is Astro?

Astro is a modern static site generator that offers:

• Zero JavaScript by Default - Ship only the HTML and CSS you need
• Islands Architecture - Interactive components load on demand
• Framework Agnostic - Use React, Vue, Svelte, or vanilla JS
• Content-Focused - Built for content-rich websites

Why Choose Astro?

graph LR
    A[Content] --> B[Astro]
    B --> C[HTML]
    B --> D[CSS]
    B --> E[Minimal JS]
    C --> F[Fast Website]
    D --> F
    E --> F

Performance Benefits

Installation

Getting started with Astro is straightforward:

# Create a new project
npm create astro@latest my-astro-site

# Navigate to project
cd my-astro-site

# Start development server
npm run dev

Project Structure

A typical Astro project looks like this:

my-astro-site/
├── public/          # Static assets
├── src/
│   ├── components/  # UI components
│   ├── layouts/     # Page layouts
│   └── pages/       # File-based routing
├── astro.config.mjs # Configuration
└── package.json

Next Steps

In the next part of this series, we’ll dive deeper into:

• Creating your first component
• Understanding Astro’s file-based routing
• Working with layouts

Stay tuned for Part 2!

This is Part 1 of the Astro Tutorial Series. Continue to Part 2 →