Modernize site framework?

[njhenry]

At our 4/8/2026 CUGOS board meeting, we discussed possibly migrating the site framework off of Jekyll to a Javascript-based framework like Astro. This is a major change, so we'll want a thorough discussion of our options and sign-off from the full group before proceeding. I'm opening this Issue as a space to start that conversation.

Some considerations for a framework:

1. This change would touch practically every page on the site—a big lift, but doable with a small volunteer team (and possibly some AI assistance)
2. Ease of contribution: probably the top consideration for our site. Two elements to this: (a) it should be easy to contribute to content pages using markdown or similar, and (b) it should be easy to preview the site locally before committing.
3. Link rot: would a migration break our old links, if so is that a problem?
4. Any changes in functionality or site features?
5. How to validate the new site is working well
6. Long-term outlook: we should choose a framework that we'll be happy with for the next decade

Please share your thoughts or resources to help guide our decision!

[njhenry]

Some relevant discussions comparing Jekyll, Astro, and other frameworks:

• Jekyll vs Astro (blog post, written 2024)
• Framework comparison - Jekyll vs Gatsby vs Astro vs Zola (Reddit thread from 2025)

[mizmay]

Just to add one more (lighter weight) one to the mix: I used 11ty for my workshop recently. Pretty easy, lighter weight than Astro, just write markdown and run a npm run build command to generate HTML, etc. Supports iframes for interactive maps. There are also plugins.