The project
Rabin.blog is my technical journal for WordPress, automation, development, and homelab notes. It also serves as a working exploration of a hybrid publishing architecture: keep WordPress where its editorial capabilities are valuable, but replace the public rendering layer with Astro.
Keep the publishing backend
WordPress remains responsible for posts, pages, custom fields, comments, media, and the editing workflow. Astro reads published content through the WordPress REST API during the build and turns it into static public routes.
This keeps the familiar backend without making normal page views dependent on a live WordPress render.
Adapt the frontend to the content
The current private implementation uses a Chirping/Chirpy-style reading interface adapted around WordPress data rather than forcing WordPress content into a purely local Markdown theme.
The integration includes:
- WordPress posts and pages at root-level public URLs
- Archive, yearly archive, category, and pagination routes
- ACF-backed project entries
- Featured-image and Open Graph metadata
- Heading anchors and article table of contents
- Related posts and previous/next navigation
- Dark and light reading modes with syntax highlighting
- Pagefind search generated after the Astro build
Preserve comments without restoring the whole frontend
WordPress-backed comments remain available through dedicated server functions. Public comments can be loaded from WordPress, and submissions return moderation-aware feedback while retaining the WordPress comment system as the source of truth.
Static media and publishing automation
WordPress images are cached during the build and copied into the deployed output, so published pages do not depend on retrieving every image from WordPress at request time.
A small WordPress add-on triggers a Netlify build when published posts or pages change. The result is a static delivery model that still responds to the familiar WordPress publishing action.
Practical outcome
Rabin.blog is live on this architecture. It retains WordPress’s authoring, custom content, media, and discussion capabilities while serving the public journal through Astro 6 and Netlify. The current source repository is private; the remaining portfolio work is a visual walkthrough using real screenshots.