Building Documentation Sites with Starlight
Starlight is a documentation theme tool in the Astro ecosystem, designed specifically for building modern, high-performance documentation websites. Built on Astro, it inherits its fast and flexible features while providing out-of-the-box documentation functionality. Here’s an introduction to Starlight’s core features:
Starlight Features
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Astro Foundation: Built on Astro, enjoying features like static generation and component-first architecture while maintaining extremely fast loading speeds.
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Theme Customization: Offers configurable UI themes, supporting customization of colors, fonts, logos, and other brand elements without writing CSS.
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Multilingual Support: Built-in internationalization (i18n) solution, supporting multilingual documentation sites with automatic language switching and routing.
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Smart Search: Integrated full-text search functionality with keyboard shortcuts and highlighted search results.
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SEO Optimization: Automatically generates proper meta tags, Open Graph data, and structured data to improve search engine visibility.
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Component Library: Provides rich built-in components including tabs, code blocks, version notices, and more to accelerate documentation writing.
How to Use Starlight
Creating a New Project
Use the following command to create a Starlight-based documentation project:
npm create astro@latest -- --template starlight
Project Structure
Typical Starlight project structure:
src/content/docs/
: Markdown/MDX documentation contentsrc/configs/
: Configuration files (theme, navigation bar, etc.)public/
: Static assetsastro.config.mjs
: Astro configuration file
Basic Configuration
Configure basic information in astro.config.mjs
:
import { defineConfig } from 'astro/config';import starlight from '@astrojs/starlight';
export default defineConfig({ integrations: [ starlight({ title: 'My Documentation', social: { github: 'https://github.com/your-repo', }, }), ],});
Adding Documentation Content
Create .md
files in the src/content/docs/
directory:
---title: Quick Start---
# Installation Guide
1. Install dependencies: ```bash npm install ```
- Start development server:
Terminal window npm run dev
### Customizing Theme
Modify theme colors through configuration file:
```javascript// astro.config.mjsstarlight({ // ...other configurations components: { theme: { colors: { primary: { hue: 200, saturation: 100, } } } }})
Best Practices
-
Enhance content with components:
## Feature Demo<Tabs><Tab label="React">```jsxfunction Counter() { ... }```</Tab><Tab label="Vue">```vue<script setup>const count = ref(0)</script>```</Tab></Tabs> -
Utilize version control:
---title: Changelogversion:current: v2.0---
Deploying Documentation
Starlight supports all Astro-compatible deployment platforms. Recommended approach:
npm run build
Deploy the generated dist/
directory to your hosting service.
Conclusion
Starlight provides a modern solution for creating and maintaining technical documentation. Combined with Astro’s performance advantages and out-of-the-box documentation features, it’s an ideal choice for building product documentation, API references, and technical guides. Through its rich configuration options and extensibility, you can easily create professional-grade documentation sites.