My Time with VitePress

As you may know, I recently launched a new project named "Aplós" – a VitePress theme that introduced me to the world of "Markdown" on the web.

Until then, I wasn't a fan of Zola, Jekyll, VuePress, and all these 'blog' static engines. In fact, I wasn't fond of VitePress initially; it seemed confusing. However, Aplós changed my perspective on static engines and led me to the point where I rebuilt my website using both VitePress and Aplós.

I understood that it's actually amazing! I've become a genuine fan of VitePress. It offers a fresh approach to website development. Coming from building Vue & Vite websites, I found it clean and simple. Unlike the complexity of writing in HTML/Vue Template, VitePress provides a simpler yet powerful way to create websites. By using VitePress as with the option "custom theme", I had the flexibility of any other Vue app but in a much simpler manner! I even tried converting the Semantic HTML Website into VitePress.

Spoiler: It worked!

Semantic HTML ​

If you're not aware, I have a small project called "Semantic HTML Documentation." It's a one-page website that explains the core concepts of Semantic HTML alongside other links for further reading.

Until recently, I used Vue & Vite to build the website and GitHub Pages to host it. And it was a big mess.

It was more complicated than necessary. So, just minutes before going to sleep yesterday, I had a great idea: to rebuild the website from Vue & Vite to VitePress. And I got to work!

Surprisingly, it didn't take long. Since the project already used Vue, I simply copied and pasted to bring all the components to my new branch. Additionally, I moved to SCSS for its ease of use. In about 30 minutes, the Pull Request was ready!

This demonstrates how easy VitePress is: you can migrate from Vue & Vite to VitePress in about 30 minutes (including converting HTML into Markdown using a nice online tool). The new VitePress version is live at semantichtml.github.io.

Update: After receiving multiple suggestions to simplify the webpage design, similar to the design that multiple GNOME project webpages have, I decided to rebuild Semantic's website using Aplós. I was pleased with the result, so I switched to the new version. Of course, the process was quick and straightforward.

Conclusion ​

It's been over three months since I delved into VitePress, and I have no regrets. I haven't encountered any serious issues with VitePress, and it supports all the features we enjoy with both Vite and Vue. The intresting part is that it hasn't even reached a stable release yet (as of the time of writing, it's on version 1.0.0-rc.45)! I highly recommend anyone to try VitePress, whether you're coming from Zola/Jekyll, and especially if you're still using VuePress (spoiler: ).

Lastly, I want to thank the team at VitePress for making such a good project. Looking forward to the stable release!