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:

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
   ```

2. Start development server:

   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:

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.