Pivoting from Squarespace to Astro
Rebuilding 25th Hour Ideas from a hosted Squarespace site into a website I actually own and understand.
The experiment
25th Hour Ideas originally lived on Squarespace.
It worked, but over time I became increasingly interested in what would happen if I stopped relying on a hosted website builder and built the site myself.
So I’m rebuilding 25th Hour Ideas from scratch using Astro and modern web tooling.
Why?
This isn’t really an experiment in building websites.
It’s an experiment in ownership.
Squarespace makes it incredibly easy to publish a website without thinking about how the underlying system works. That’s useful—but I wanted to understand the other side of the tradeoff.
What happens when you own the files, the content, the design, and the infrastructure?
What becomes possible when changing the site doesn’t require working within the constraints of a template or platform?
What I’m learning
The interesting part has been discovering how much simpler a personal website can actually be.
Instead of trying to make one platform do everything, I’m experimenting with a lightweight stack and using AI to help with the parts I don’t know how to build myself.
The goal isn’t to become a professional web developer.
The goal is to build something I understand well enough to keep changing.
What happens next
I’m treating the site itself as an ongoing experiment.
The design will change.
The projects will change.
The ideas will change.
That’s the point.
25th Hour Ideas should feel less like a finished publication and more like a record of what I’m currently thinking, building, and testing.