Building a Personal Blog with SvelteKit

When I decided to build my personal blog, I wanted something fast, simple, and fully under my control. After evaluating a few options — Next.js, Astro, Hugo — I landed on SvelteKit. Here's why, and how I put it all together.

Why SvelteKit?

SvelteKit offers an incredible developer experience. Components are concise, reactivity is built into the language, and the file-based routing system just makes sense. Compared to React-based frameworks, there's significantly less boilerplate.

The key reasons:

Performance: Svelte compiles to vanilla JS with no virtual DOM overhead
Simplicity: Single-file components with scoped styles
Flexibility: SSR, SSG, or SPA — you choose per route
Ecosystem: Tailwind CSS, mdsvex, and other tools integrate seamlessly

The Markdown Setup

For blog content, I'm using mdsvex — a Svelte preprocessor that lets you write markdown files and render them as Svelte components. Each post is a .md file with YAML frontmatter:

---
title: My Post Title
description: A short summary
date: '2026-01-15'
categories:
  - webdev
published: true
---

The frontmatter gets parsed and used for listing pages, SEO, and filtering.

Styling with Tailwind

Tailwind CSS handles the utility-first styling, but I've also defined custom CSS variables for the color palette. This gives me the speed of Tailwind with the consistency of a design system.

The color scheme uses warm, muted tones — a cream background (#fcfcf9) paired with a deep teal (#20808d) for accents and a punchy orange-red (#ff611a) for highlights.

What's Next

I'm planning to add:

RSS feed generation
Full-text search across posts
Reading time estimates
A dark mode toggle

If you're thinking about building your own blog, SvelteKit is a fantastic choice. The learning curve is gentle, the output is fast, and you own every line of code.