Hello! It’s been literal years since the BigfootDS website had an update, and I’ve learned so much since the last build - so here’s a new website!

New Website Tech Stack

The major system driving the website is now Astro.

The website still uses ReactJS where appropriate, because components keep a codebase “D.R.Y”, but using Astro allows for a few nifty impmrovements:

• static page compilation
• mixing file types
• improved per-page data such as OpenGraph and Google Search structured metadata

A lot of this was still possible on the old pure ReactJS SPA website (not static compilation, but ReactJS’s static/server compiler will be more and more stable as time goes on), but this new architecture makes it easier to do things better.

So, this website now uses a big mix of languages, tools, libraries, etc - but it all compiles down into a nice set of performant, SEO-friendly, HTML/CSS/JS webpages.

Future Website Plans

Two major things that I want to implement on the website next, in 2025:

• Interactive user pages to integrate BigfootDS microservices/servers, such as user accounts, which will allow for email subscriptions and game-related “web shop” systems.
• i18n localization, which should be very doable with Astro and ReactJS both having great i18n-related systems already. Just gotta spend time learning and localizing things.

Astro’s “island” architecture will make it easy for me to add the more-complex and more-dynamic ReactJS-driven functionality such as user accounts and ecommerce without slowing any of the static webpages down. Hopefully, this means that I can chip away at things without wrecking the static, unchanging parts of the website. Hopefully!

And yes, some of the project pages’ Steam store buttons do not actually show you anything yet. Keen-eyed webdevs will notice that the URLs are set correctly - but the Steam pages just aren’t live yet! That’s more stuff to come soon! 😉