How this site is built: Astro, Cloudflare Workers and a $0 hosting bill

When I set up this site, I had three requirements: it should cost nothing beyond the domain, adding or removing content should take seconds, and there should be nothing to patch at 2 a.m. Here is the setup I ended up with.

The stack

• Astro generates plain static HTML. No server, no database, almost no attack surface.
• GitHub holds the code and the content. Experience, skills and certifications live in small YAML files; blog posts are Markdown.
• Cloudflare Workers serves the static assets from the edge and runs one tiny function for the contact form.
• Cloudflare Registrar sells the domain at cost, so renewals don’t jump after year one.

Git push = deploy

Cloudflare’s Git integration builds and deploys on every push to main. The whole deployment config is a few lines:

{
  "name": "sametustaoglu-com",
  "main": "worker/index.ts",
  "assets": {
    "directory": "./dist",
    "binding": "ASSETS",
    "run_worker_first": ["/api/*"]
  },
  "send_email": [{ "name": "CONTACT" }]
}

Static requests never touch the Worker. Only /api/* does, which keeps it well inside the free tier.

A contact form without a mail server

The form posts to /api/contact. The Worker validates the input, drops obvious bots with a honeypot field and a minimum fill time, and sends the message through Cloudflare Email Routing’s send_email binding to a verified inbox. The Reply-To header is set to the visitor’s address, so answering is just pressing Reply.

Content without touching code

All content is data-driven, so the page renders whatever the YAML and Markdown files contain. For editing in the browser I use Pages CMS: it reads a small .pages.yml schema, shows proper forms, and every Save becomes a Git commit — which triggers a deploy.

What it costs

Item	Cost
Domain (.com, at cost)	~$11 / year
Hosting, CDN, TLS	$0
Contact form email	$0

Boring infrastructure is good infrastructure — even for a personal website.