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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

  1. Astro Foundation: Built on Astro, enjoying features like static generation and component-first architecture while maintaining extremely fast loading speeds.

  2. Theme Customization: Offers configurable UI themes, supporting customization of colors, fonts, logos, and other brand elements without writing CSS.

  3. Multilingual Support: Built-in internationalization (i18n) solution, supporting multilingual documentation sites with automatic language switching and routing.

  4. Smart Search: Integrated full-text search functionality with keyboard shortcuts and highlighted search results.

  5. SEO Optimization: Automatically generates proper meta tags, Open Graph data, and structured data to improve search engine visibility.

  6. 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:

Terminal window
npm create astro@latest -- --template starlight

Project Structure

Typical Starlight project structure:

  • src/content/docs/: Markdown/MDX documentation content
  • src/configs/: Configuration files (theme, navigation bar, etc.)
  • public/: Static assets
  • astro.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
```
  1. Start development server:
    Terminal window
    npm run dev
### Customizing Theme
Modify theme colors through configuration file:
```javascript
// astro.config.mjs
starlight({
// ...other configurations
components: {
theme: {
colors: {
primary: {
hue: 200,
saturation: 100,
}
}
}
}
})

Best Practices

  1. Enhance content with components:

    ## Feature Demo
    <Tabs>
    <Tab label="React">
    ```jsx
    function Counter() { ... }
    ```
    </Tab>
    <Tab label="Vue">
    ```vue
    <script setup>
    const count = ref(0)
    </script>
    ```
    </Tab>
    </Tabs>
  2. Utilize version control:

    ---
    title: Changelog
    version:
    current: v2.0
    ---

Deploying Documentation

Starlight supports all Astro-compatible deployment platforms. Recommended approach:

Terminal window
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.