GitHub - CodeStitchOfficial/Intermediate-Astro-v4-Decap-CMS: This intermediate kit includes a pre-configured setup for Astro v4, including a blog powered by DecapCMS and Astro's Content Collections. Also features Dark Mode, ViewTransitions and Components, complete with CodeStitch UI.

Intermediate Astro v4 - Decap CMS

This intermediate kit includes a pre-configured Astro setup, along with five pages filled with CodeStitch components. Everything is ready to go right from the start, offering a fantastic introduction to the advantages of a Static Site Generator, complete with LESS preprocessing and a blog powered by Decap CMS. This kit also leverages the power of a few Astro tools such as, but not limited to, Content Collections, View Transitions, Astro components, scoped styling and scripting etc.

View Live Result

Created and maintained by BuckyBuck135

Overview

This intermediate kit includes a pre-configured Astro environment, which allows for repeated components, centralized data and greater room to scale as your clients grow. The kit runs the latest major Astro version, v4. On top of this, a blog has been provided through Decap CMS to allow your clients to manage their content on their own. This can easily be adapted to anything which requires changing content, such as menus, job listing boards, portfolios and much more.

An example website has also been provided, with easy substitution of website sections possible through the use of CodeStitch's vanilla component library. This kit aims to get any project off the ground in as little time as possible, with deployment being possible in as little as two minutes. We recommend Netlify as a host to take advantage of Netlify Identity and client authentication to the CMS dashboard.

Getting Started

At the top right of the GitHub Repository, click the green Use this template button, then click Create a new repository.
Follow the instructions to create a new repository, using this repo as a template.
When created, clone the repository to your local machine.
Run npm install to install all dependencies.
Run npm run dev to start the project and spin up a development server on localhost:4321 and a Decap admin server. Access the admin dashboard at the /admin path.

Next, it is recommended to update data/client.json with some new information about this project. Through the power of templating, the project's <head> and contact information will automatically be filled out, providing a first peek into some of the benefits of SSGs.

You can find all of CodeStitches :root variables, as well as .cs-topper, .cs-title and .cs-text, within the root stylesheet. Feel free to adjust these, or use our Content Flair micro-stitches, to update site-wide styles quickly.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge:

Cedar Studios - Their Intermediate-Astro-Kit-LESS is the base of this template, which aims to improve on a few issues such as a breaking update to Astro v.4 due to outdated astro-netlify-cms integration.
CodeStitch - Some of their free stitches were used in this template.

Prerequisites

Only the vanilla web technologies are required before using this kit, with some familiarity with Astro and React-style Components and props also recommended, but not essential. A lot of the leg-work for the non-vanilla technologies has been done for you. If you would like to read up on some of these things, we recommend the following resources:

Astro's Documentation
Astro Crash Course in 20 Minutes!
Decap CMS' docs can also be found should you wish to extend the CMS beyond what's in this kit

Features

Runs on Astro v4
Decap CMS integration with a blog ready to go. Give access to your client via Netlify Identity to allow them to write blog posts. Their edits will be pushed to the repository, triggering a re-build automatically.
Astro's <ViewTransitions /> integration
Components, props and scoped styles, as demonstrated in /src/components/Landing.astro for example
Astro's built-in components such as <Picture />, as demonstrated in /src/components/Landing.astro for example
Astro's content collections, leveraging image validation. This allows the use of Astro components on user-uploaded images via the CMS, automatically converting your images to modern .webp or .avif format.
Accessible dropdown menus on desktop navigation and nested pages
CodeStitch HTML and CSS blocks to build the UI.
Perfect Lighthouse scores

This kit ships the following packages:

Astro Icon - Astro Icon is a straightforward icon system for the Astro framework.
Autoprefixer - PostCSS plugin to parse CSS and add vendor prefixes to CSS rules using values from Can I Use. It is recommended by Google and used in Twitter and Alibaba.
LESS - Less makes a few convenient additions to the CSS language, but you can also simply write standard CSS if you wish.

Project Structure

Astro leverages an opinionated folder layout for your project. Every Astro project root should include the following directories and files:

src/* - Your project source code (components, pages, styles, etc.)
public/* - Your non-code, unprocessed assets (fonts, icons, etc.)
package.json - A project manifest.
astro.config.mjs - An Astro configuration file. (recommended)
tsconfig.json - A TypeScript configuration file. (recommended)

Project Tree

.
├── public/
│   ├── admin/
|   |   └── config.yml
|   |—— assets/
|   |   |—— favicons/
|   |   |—— fonts/
|   |   |—— images/
|   |   └── svgs/
|   |—— _redirects
|   |—— robots.txt
|   └── sitemap.html
├── src/
|   ├── assets/
|   |   └—— images/
|   |       └── blog/
|   |   └—— js/
|   |       └── nav.js
|   ├── components/
|   ├── content/
|   |   |—— config.ts
|   |   └── blog/
│   ├── _data/
│   │   ├── client.json
│   │   └── navData.json
│   ├── icons/
│   ├── layouts/
│   │   └── BaseLayout.astro
|   ├── libs/
|   |   └── utils.js
│   ├── pages/
|   |   └── blog/
|   |   └── projects/
|   └── styles/
├── astro.config.mjs
├── postcss.config.cjs
├── package-lock.json
├── package.json
└── tsconfig.json

Root Files and Folders

`public/*`

The public/ directory is for files and assets in your project that do not need to be processed during Astro’s build process. The files in this folder will be copied into the build folder untouched, and then your site will be built.

This behavior makes public/ ideal for common assets like images and fonts, or special files such as_redirects, robots.txt and sitemap.xml.

_redirects - To configure redirects. Read more on Netlify
content/ - Data to render pages from, such as the blog.
robots.txt - Instructions for site crawlers. Learn more, and generate your own, here
sitemap.xml - A map of the pages on the domain. Create your own after deployment here

You can place CSS and JavaScript in your public/ directory, but be aware that those files will not be bundled or optimized in your final build.

`public/admin`

This folder contains config/yml, which is where Decap CMS configuration options lives. More information about options in Decap docs

`src/*`

The src/ folder is where most of your project source code lives. This includes:

Pages
Layouts
Astro components
UI framework components (React, etc.)
Styles (CSS, Sass)
Markdown

Astro processes, optimizes, and bundles your src/ files to create the final website that is shipped to the browser. Unlike the static public/ directory, your src/ files are built and handled for you by Astro.

`src/assets`

Contains all assets you want optimized by Astro (such as assets used in <Picture /> components for example) must be placed in src.

public/assets/images/blog is where the images uploaded on the CMS will be stored.

`src/components`

Components are reusable units of code for your HTML pages. These could be Astro components, or UI framework components like React or Vue. It is common to group and organize all of your project components together in this folder.

`src/content`

The src/content/ directory is reserved to store content collections organised in folders (e.g. src/content/blog) containing .md files, and an optional config.ts collections configuration file. No other files are allowed inside this folder.

`src/data`

This directory contains data files that are accessible within any template throughout the project.

client.js holds some information you may wish to define for a client. It's important to fill this file out with the correct information for your client, as many HTML meta tags, the sitemap, and robots.txt all use data from this file.
navData.json holds data to create the navigation of your site. See more information in the navigation via navData.json section

`src/icons`

SVGs used by the component must be placed in this folder.

`src/layouts`

Layouts are Astro components that define the UI structure shared by one or more pages. The BaseLayout.astro file acts as a giant wrapper for each individual page, where the content is injected through the <slot /> component.

`src/libs`

Contains helper functions.

`src/pages`

Pages are a special kind of component used to create new pages on your site. A page can be an Astro component, or a Markdown file that represents some page of content for your site.

`src/styles`

It is a common convention to store your CSS, Less or Sass files in a src/styles directory.

`package.json` and `package-lock.json`

The project's manifest. Standard NodeJS package files, containing the dependencies needed for the project to work.

`node_modules/*`

Created after you run npm install. This directory contains the code for all the dependencies that power this kit. It comes as standard with any NodeJS-powered project, much like the package.json and package-lock.json files. You can safely ignore this directory in your day-to-day work.

`dist/`

Created after running npm build. This will hold the final build of your site.

`astro.config.mjs`

An Astro configuration file. It's already set up for you, but you can extend it with integrations to use, build options, server options, and more.

`tsconfig.json`

A TypeScript configuration file. Optional. Includes TypeScript configuration options for your Astro project. Some features (like npm package imports) aren’t fully supported in the editor without a tsconfig.json file.

Expanding the Project

Aimed towards freelancers, this kit was made with scalability and flexibility in mind, suiting a range of websites and client needs. As such, it is your choice whether you'd rather make small tweaks to the existing site, or clear all the page content and build a site all over again. Outlined below are some best practices for when it comes to building on top of this kit:

Reusing Code

The main advantage to using an SSG is it brings components, popularized by JavaScript-heavy frameworks like React or Vue, to vanilla HTML. As Astro is being used, componentization can be achieved through JSX-like syntax within .astro files.

For example, there is a call to action at the bottom of most pages. As the text content or styles don't need to change, <CTA /> was used. If this wasn't the case, and we wanted the CTA text to change, we'd start to think about passing props to <CTA />.

An example of passing props to components is Landing />.

In about.astro:

---
// import the component
import Landing from "@components/Landing.astro";
---

<BaseLayout
  title="About"
  description="Meta description for the page"
  preloadImg="/assets/images/cabinets2.jpg"
>
  // Use the <Landing /> component
  <Landing 
    title="About Us" // pass a `title` prop to the component
  />

In Landing.astro

---
const { title } = Astro.props // Destructure the incoming props. Note the `Astrop.props` syntax
---

<h1 id="home-h">{title}</h1> // Consumme the title prop in the JSX markup

Scripts and Event Handling

You can add interactivity to your Astro components using standard HTML <script> tags. This allows you to send JavaScript to run in the browser and add functionality to your Astro components.

Using `<script>` in Astro

This kit uses scripts in two different ways:

Imported from src/

Astro will build, optimize, and add these scripts to the page for you.

async and defer attributes are unnecessary. Indeed, the processed script will be injected into your page’s with type="module" and module scripts are always deferred automatically.

For example, nav.js lives in src/ and is used in Baselayout.astro like so:

<script src="../assets/js/nav.js"></script>

Scoped to the component

Another way to use scripts in Astro is to use them directly in the component. For example, the FAQ.astro component uses a <script> tag to toggle the FAQ elements on and off. This script doesn't need to be executed on every page, so it is best scoped to its component.

This being said, this particular script could also well be imported from src/ as seen above, and it would work too.

Using scripts with `<ViewTransitions />` enabled

When you add view transitions to an existing Astro project, some of your scripts may no longer re-run after page navigation like they did with full-page browser refreshes.

The router fires a number of events on the document during navigation. These events provide hooks into the lifecycle of navigation, allowing you to do things like show indicators that a new page is loading, override default behavior, and restore state as navigation is completing.

In this kit, both the nav and FAQ scripts use the astro:page-load wrapper. You can use this event to run code on every page navigation, for example to set up event listeners that would otherwise be lost during navigation.

<script>
  document.addEventListener('astro:page-load', () => {
    // This runs on first page load and after every navigation.
    setupStuff(); // e.g. add event listeners
  });
</script>

For an in-depth explanation, please refer to the documentation.

Adding More Pages

Thanks to Astro Navigation, adding new pages is as simple as adding a file to src/pages/ and including it in the data/navData.json file:

---
// optional JavaScript frontmatter
---

<BaseLayout
  title="Page title for <title> and OG tags"
  description="Description for <meta> and OG tags"
>
    <!-- Page HTML goes here, without a <main> wrapper -->
</BaseLayout>

Starting from the top, you can see some data enclosed in --- tags. This is known as the page's front matter, which provides additional data to when it comes to rendering your pages.

To add sub-pages, you will first need to create a new folder under src/pages/ and populate it with .astro pages. Look at the src/pages/projects forlder for an example. Don't forget to edit navData.json to handle the navigation. The navigation bar is already set up to create drop-down menus.

Navigation via navData.json

The header navigation in the project is powered by the navData.json file. Each page in the navigation should be included as an item with a key property (page title to be displayed) and a url property (include a trailing slash).

To add subpages, populate the children array with page objects (i.e., object containing a key and url property.) If a page has a populated children array, a dropdown will be created, provided that a Navigation + Dropdown Stitch is being used (see below). Navigation links will render in the order they're declared.

If you wish to use an alternative Navigation stitch, you are welcome to swap out the .cs-ul-wrapper div in the Stitch for the one used in this starter kit. This will allow you to continue to reap the benefits of navigation vi navData.json. If you want to include dropdown menus in your navigation, you can use the .cs-ul-wrapper div below

Note: we have customised this navigation wrapper to include better accessibility features, which you will not find in navigation stitches.

<div class="cs-ul-wrapper">
  <ul id="cs-expanded-ul" class="cs-ul">
    {navData.map((entry) => (
      <li
        class:list={[
          "cs-li",
          { "cs-dropdown": entry.children?.length > 0 },
        ]}
        
      >
        {entry.children?.length > 0 ? (
          // If entry has children in navData.json, create a button and a dropdown icon
          <button
          aria-expanded="false"
          aria-controls={`submenu-${entry.key}`}
          aria-label="dropdown-label"
            class:list={[
              "cs-li-link cs-dropdown-button",
              { "cs-active": Astro.url.pathname.includes(entry.url)},
            ]}
          >
            {entry.key}
            <Icon name="mdi--caret" class="cs-drop-icon" />
          </button>
        ) : (
          // If entry does not have children in navData.json, create an anchor
          <a
            href={entry.url}
            class:list={[
              "cs-li-link",
              { "cs-active": Astro.url.pathname === entry.url },
            ]}
            aria-current={Astro.url.pathname === entry.url ? "page" : undefined}
          >
            {entry.key}
          </a>
        )}
        
        {entry.children?.length > 0 && (
          // If entry has children in navData.json, create a drop down menu
          <ul id={`submenu-${entry.key}`} class="cs-drop-ul">
            {entry.children.map((child) => (
              <li class="cs-drop-li">
                <a 
                  href={child.url} 
                  class="cs-li-link cs-drop-link"
                  aria-current={Astro.url.pathname === child.url ? "page" : undefined}
                  aria-label={child.key}
                >
                  {child.key}
                </a>
              </li>
            ))}
          </ul>
        )}
      </li>
    ))}
  </ul>
</div>

Should you wish to use your own method of rendering the navigation, you can still take advantage of applying the "active" class styles by using a smaller amount of code within the class attribute of the link:

<li class="cs-li">
  <a href="/about" class:list={["cs-li-link, {"cs-active": "/about/" === Astro.url.pathname }]}>About</a>
</li>

In this case, if the page slug is "about", the .cs-active class will be applied. You're welcome to adjust the page slug value to whatever you require ("blog", "/", "services", etc) For dropdowns, you can use a similar philosophy on the parent dropdown's class attribute, checking to see if any of the child pages are active before applying the styles. An example of this is shown below:

<li class="nav-link cs-li cs-dropdown">
  <span class:list={["cs-li-link nav-link",
    { 'cs-active': '/annapolis-custom-closets/' === Astro.url.pathname },
    { 'cs-active': '/bowie-custom-closets/' === Astro.url.pathname },
    { 'cs-active': '/severna-park-custom-closets/' === Astro.url.pathname },
    { 'cs-active': '/odenton-custom-closets/' === Astro.url.pathname },
  ]}>
    Areas Served
    <img class="cs-drop-icon" src="/assets/images/down.svg" alt="dropdown icon" width="15" height="15" decoding="async" aria-hidden="true">
  </span>
  <ul class="cs-drop-ul">
    <li class="cs-drop-li">
      <a href="/annapolis-custom-closets" class="cs-drop-link">Annapolis</a>
    </li>
    <li class="cs-drop-li">
      <a href="/bowie-custom-closets" class="cs-drop-link">Bowie</a>
    </li>
    <li class="cs-drop-li">
      <a href="/severna-park-custom-closets" class="cs-drop-link">Severna Park</a>
    </li>
    <li class="cs-drop-li">
      <a href="/odenton-custom-closets" class="cs-drop-link">Odenton</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</li>

In the above example, we're checking to see if the active page slug matches any of the four that are listed (annapolis, bowie, severna or odenton) and applying the .cs-active style to the parent if it does.

Below the front matter is the page content. Any code that should be sent to a layout should be enclosed in the layout's component:

<BaseLayout>
  <!-- Your html/jsx code here -->
</BaseLayout>

This code will be inserted into the <slot /> component in BaseLayout.astro.

Built-in Astro components: `<Image />` and `<Picture />`

This kit demonstrates the use of the built-in <Picture /> component, for which you can read the documentation here. However, not all native HTML <picture> elements from CodeStitch blocks have been replaced with Astro's <Picture /> components. CodeStich users will have to decide which one they want to use:

CodeStich blocks already have fully-functionning <picture> elements that perform very well. However, the developper will have to do a time-consumming job with resizing and reformatting assets.
Astro's <Picture /> components must be manually written to replace stitches. On the other hand, they automatically process and optimize assets, which allows the developper to skip the resizing and reformatting preparation work.

Custompicturecomponent

Astro provides two built-in components that you can use to display and optimize your images.

The component allows you to display responsive images and work with different formats and sizes.
The component will optimize your images and allow you to pass in different formats and quality properties.

If you want to replicate the <picture> elements with multiple srcset found in many Stitches, you can use our custom <CSPicture /> component located in /src/Components/TemplateComponents.

It uses Astro's getImage() function to create a custom image component that displays different source images based on media queries.

Note: the component will automatically convert your .jpg files to .webp!

---
// Import the component and all the images you want to use with it
import CSPicture from "@components/TemplateComponents/CSPicture.astro";
import mobileImage from "@assets/images/construction-m.jpg"
import desktopImage from "@assets/images/cabinets2.jpg"
import fallbackImage from "@assets/images/cabinets2.jpg"
---

  <CSPicture
    mobileImgUrl={mobileImage}
    mobileMediaWidth="600px"
    desktopImgUrl={desktopImage}
    desktopMediaWidth="601px"
    fallbackImgUrl={fallbackImage}
    alt=""
  />

It is currently set up to

accept 3 images (mobile, desktop and fallback) that can be not only different sizes, crops but also completely different assets, as demnnstrated here.
accept mobile and desktop media width if you want to adjust these sizes on a case by case basis.

You can of course adjust the sizes of attributes baased on your customization's needs directly in the component.

Configuring the CMS

In public/admin/, you'll find a config.yml file which contains the configuration for the blog. While this project is set up to work with a blog out of the box, you are welcome to make changes using Decap CMS' documentation.

Blog content lives in /src/content/blog in the form of markdown files, with a front matter similar to that of the pages. MDX files can also be used if you want to include JSX components. The title, description, and tags are defined in the frontmatter of the markdown. The permalink will be the same as the file name.

Files uploaded through the dashboard's media library will be stored in src/assets/images/blog so that they can be accessed and optimised by Astro components if you wish.

When npm run dev is run, a proxy server for the CMS is spun up on localhost:8081. That can often mean you run into errors if localhost:8080 is already taken, so look out for that. You can locally access the blog via navigating to the /admin path (e.g. http://localhost:4321/admin). All blog content can be easily created, updated and deleted via this admin panel, and is the very system that your clients can use to manage their website without your involvement.

Everything on the blog should be fairly intuitive, but feel free to experiment with using this panel first. With this kit, you can add featured to the comma-separated list of tags to have them show up as so in the frontend.

Astro content collections

In /src/content, you will see a config.ts file. This is where you can configure Astro Content Collections. This step is not necessary to run the blog with Decap CMS, but it will supercharge your Astro pages and content. Collections help to

organize your documents,
validate your frontmatter,
provide automatic TypeScript type-safety for all of your content,
use Astro's <Image /> and <Picture /> components with user-uplaoded images via the CMS.

This template already has Content Collections configured for immediate use of the blog content, but you could use them to power up the Portfolio or Gallery for example.

Content Collections can also be used on content that is not created via the CMS.

Deployment

Before you deploy, it is recommended to test the build. Run npm run build to build the project. Once done, run npm run preview which you can access on http://localhost:4321/. This allows you to test your website as if it was deployed on your host.
Ensure the sitemap, robots.txt and _redirects have been filled out. Instructions and tools for how to do so can be found in the File Structure section
Navigate to your Netlify Admin Panel, click Add new site | Import an existing project
Follow the instructions to connect your GitHub repository to Netlify.
Once deployed, go to the project's page, click on Site configuration then Identity in the navigation, then click Enable Identity
Invite yourself, and the client, to the site
While in the Identity tab, click the "Settings and usage" button to open the settings options. Then, do the following:
- Go to Registration / Registration Preferences, and set registration from Public to Invite Only
- Go to Registration / External Providers and add a provider. We recommend Google, so the client can login with Google in 1 click.
- Go to Services / Git Gateway and enable it.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge:

Cedar Studios - Their Intermediate-Astro-Kit-LESS is the base of this template, which aims to improve on a few issues such as a breaking update to Astro v.4 due to outdated astro-netlify-cms integration.
CodeStitch - Some of their free stitches were used in this template.

Conclusion

I hope that this kit will prove useful to you. If you have any questions or would like to connect, feel free to reach out on Twitter or at buckybuck on Discord.

Happy coding! Geoffrey

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 93 Commits
.vscode		.vscode
public		public
src		src
.gitignore		.gitignore
README.md		README.md
astro.config.mjs		astro.config.mjs
package-lock.json		package-lock.json
package.json		package.json
postcss.config.cjs		postcss.config.cjs
tsconfig.json		tsconfig.json

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Intermediate Astro v4 - Decap CMS

Table of Contents

Overview

Getting Started

Acknowledgments

Prerequisites

Features

Project Structure

Project Tree

Root Files and Folders

public/*

public/admin

src/*

src/assets

src/components

src/content

src/data

src/icons

src/layouts

src/libs

src/pages

src/styles

package.json and package-lock.json

node_modules/*

dist/

astro.config.mjs

tsconfig.json

Expanding the Project

Reusing Code

Scripts and Event Handling

Using <script> in Astro

Using scripts with <ViewTransitions /> enabled

Adding More Pages

Navigation via navData.json

Built-in Astro components: <Image /> and <Picture />

Custompicturecomponent

Configuring the CMS

Astro content collections

Deployment

Acknowledgments

Conclusion

About

Topics

Resources

Stars

Watchers

Forks

Releases

Packages 0

Languages

`public/*`

`public/admin`

`src/*`

`src/assets`

`src/components`

`src/content`

`src/data`

`src/icons`

`src/layouts`

`src/libs`

`src/pages`

`src/styles`

`package.json` and `package-lock.json`

`node_modules/*`

`dist/`

`astro.config.mjs`

`tsconfig.json`

Using `<script>` in Astro

Using scripts with `<ViewTransitions />` enabled

Built-in Astro components: `<Image />` and `<Picture />`

Packages