ASTRO - SSG: Components & How to use Them

Blogs

May 14, 2024

There is one thing that you need to understand to be on the top percentile of webs.

Just use Astro - IQ Percentiles

And it is how to use components.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/how-to-add-chartjs-in-nextjs-13/

Spinning World Map: Including .GPX stuff
Charts

MermaidJS
ChartJS, like the ones used with hugo here
ApexCharts - Like this cool timeline chart

OG and SEO
RSS
SiteMap
Search: Flexsearch, fuseJS, pagefind,…

If you dont know yet, this is Astro, the HTML first framework.

And these are very good intro videos on astro:

Thanks to both: code to the moon and Awsome YT channels

ASTRO SEO PACKAGES

robots.txt - https://www.npmjs.com/package/astro-robots-txt#why-astro-robots-txt` (MIT Licensed ❤️)
You also need a sitemap!
RSS
Image Optimization - It’s built in in astro: you dont want huge images for performance and astro makes them webp.
Astro Cookies: https://docs.astro.build/en/reference/api-reference/#astrocookies
Astro OpenGraph and SEO Metadata - Like here

Adding SiteMap for Astro Pages

We will need the package: "@astrojs/sitemap": "^3.0.3"

ℹ️

Thanks to Astroverse/VisVrs Theme to show how to setup sitemaps in astro

curl -s https://fossengineer.com/sitemap.xml -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" #https://github.com/IoTechCrafts/astroverse ex visvrs
curl -s https://verse-astro.vercel.app/sitemap.xml -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n"

SiteMap Astro | Setup 📌

npm install @astrojs/sitemap

Then add it at astro.config.mjs

import { defineConfig } from 'astro/config';
import sitemap from '@astrojs/sitemap';

// https://astro.build/config
export default defineConfig({
site: 'https://yourwebsite.com', // Replace with your site's URL, very important!
integrations: [sitemap()],
});

Before theends, add:

<link rel='sitemap' href='/sitemap.xml' />
<link rel='sitemap' href='/sitemap-index.xml' />

That will make your sitemap be at: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

curl -s https://jalcocertech.com/sitemap.xml -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" #200 means its there!
curl -s https://jalcocertech.com/sitemap-index.xml -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" #could be

Make sure to have a robots.txt in the /public directory specifying the path:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Sitemap: https://yourwebsite.com/sitemap-index.xml

It is a good moment now to go to google search and insert the sitemap reference:

SiteMap Google Search

Also, you can do it for bing search:

#curl "https://www.bing.com/ping?sitemap=https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml"
curl "https://www.bing.com/ping?sitemap=https://jalcocertech.com/sitemap-index.xml"

Check that the SiteMap/RSS/Robots Works | Astro Web checks 📌

#curl -s https://example.com/sitemap.xml -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n"
curl -s https://jalcocertech.com/sitemap.xml -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" #200 means its there!
curl -s https://cyclingthere.com/sitemap.xml -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n"
curl -s https://cyclingthere.com/sitemap-index.xml -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" #its here!
curl -s https://iotechcrafts.com/sitemap.xml -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" 

curl -s https://fossengineer.com/sitemap.xml -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" #hugo paper mod has it

#optional - check robots.txt
curl -s https://jalcocertech.com/robots.txt | grep -i sitemap #look for sitemap direction
curl -s https://iotechcrafts.com/robots.txt | head -n 10 #see the first 10 lines

#example of path with robots
curl -s https://bachatafests.com/sitemap.xml -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n"
curl -s https://bachatafests.com/robots.txt | head -n 10 #see the first 10 lines
curl -s https://bachatafests.com/robots.txt | grep -i sitemap #look for sitemap direction
curl -s https://bachatafests.com/sitemap_index.xml -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n"

Search for any references to a sitemap URL within the robots.txt file. If found, you can use that URL to check for the sitemap instead

Cool features

Charts

For the ones who are crazy about data.

ChartJS

https://github.com/chartjs/Chart.js
- https://www.chartjs.org/
- https://github.com/chartjs/Chart.js?tab=MIT-1-ov-file#readme

MIT | Simple yet flexible JavaScript charting library for the modern web Simple HTML5 Charts using the

Swiper - This one I got recommended by a real web dev!

https://github.com/nolimits4web/swiper

MermaidJS

More about diagrams

Spinning World Map

If you just need a GPX map embedded into your .mdx, thats perfectly possible, like so.

Found it at theme: https://github.com/Ladvace/astro-bento-portfolio
- See the Globe component, also here

Extra nerdy details - Get your world Map for Astro 👇

You need the d3 and the solid-js package. Dont forget to add it to astro.config.mjs as integration.

import solidJs from "@astrojs/solid-js";


export default defineConfig({
  integrations: [solidJs(),],
  site: "https://yourwebsite.com",
});

"d3": "^7.9.0",
"@astrojs/solid-js": "^3.0.2",
"solid-js": "^1.8.7"

{
  "name": "astro-bento-portfolio",
  "type": "module",
  "version": "0.0.2",
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "astro dev",
    "start": "astro dev",
    "build": "astro build",
    "preview": "astro preview",
    "astro": "astro"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "@astrojs/netlify": "^3.1.1",
    "@astrojs/rss": "^4.0.1",
    "@astrojs/sitemap": "^3.0.3",
    "@astrojs/solid-js": "^3.0.2",
    "astro": "^4.0.5",
    "astro-icon": "^0.8.2",
    "astro-robots-txt": "^1.0.0",
    "mdast-util-to-string": "^4.0.0",
    "reading-time": "^1.5.0",
    "solid-js": "^1.8.7",
    "d3": "^7.9.0"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "motion": "^10.16.4",
    "autoprefixer": "^10.4.16",
    "@unocss/astro": "^0.58.0",
    "@unocss/postcss": "^0.58.0",
    "@unocss/preset-uno": "^0.58.0",
    "@unocss/reset": "^0.58.0",
    "markdown-it": "^14.0.0",
    "sanitize-html": "^2.11.0",
    "unocss": "^0.58.0"
  }
}

FAQs for Astro

With AlpineJS and TailwindCSS

Get a cool FAQ for Astro 👇

SSG Search

There are few ways to implement search of Static sites.

And some people get very created: https://dteather.com/blogs/astro-search-bar/

FlexSearch - As seen on Hextra, this theme!

FuseJS

FuseJS - https://www.fusejs.io/

Fusejs works with HUGO, like papermod!

PageFind

Pagefind is a Static web search with low bandwitdh. With a working example here

PageFind - https://github.com/cloudcannon/pagefind
- https://github.com/cloudcannon/pagefind?tab=MIT-1-ov-file#readme
- https://www.npmjs.com/package/astro-pagefind?activeTab=dependents
  - https://github.com/shishkin/astro-pagefind - MIT Licensed

Pagefind runs after Hugo, Eleventy, Jekyll, Next, Astro, SvelteKit, or any other website framework!

ℹ️

FuseJS or Flexsearch, work even on dev env, but for pagefind you will have to build the site

Interesting Post Slider with React

https://github.com/gio-del/Astro-Theme-Astroway
- https://github.com/gio-del/Astro-Theme-Astroway?tab=MIT-1-ov-file#readme

FAQ

Primitives

https://github.com/radix-ui/primitives - Unstyled, accessible, open source React primitives for high-quality web apps and design systems.

Radix Primitives is an open-source UI component library for building high-quality, accessible design systems and web apps. Maintained by @workos.

Convert the Images to WebP

Thats done automatically in Astro, as you can see here

ℹ️

Whatever you try, make sure it pass the Tips for Websites

How can I try an Astro Project? ⏬

npm install
npm run dev
npm run build
npm run preview
#npm run astro --help

How can I avoid rendering posts which are draft? ⏬

Define the content collections properly Go to the astro.config.mjs or to the config.ts file.

import { defineCollection, reference, z } from 'astro:content';

const blogCollection = defineCollection({
    type: 'content',
    schema: ({ image }) => z.object({
        title: z.string(),
        intro: z.string(),
        tag: z.string(),
        pubDate: z.date(),
        draft: z.boolean().optional(), // Add this line!!
        type: z.string().optional(),
    }),
});

const pageCollection = defineCollection({
    type: 'content',
    schema: ({ image }) => z.object({
        title: z.string(),
        intro: z.string(),
        image: image().optional(),
        type: z.string().optional(),
    }),
});

export const collections = {
    'blog': blogCollection,
    'author': authorCollection,
    'page': pageCollection,
};

Then, use it in your astro templates like:

  const allPosts = (await getCollection('blog'))
        // Filter out posts that have draft: true
        .filter(post => !post.data.draft)
        // Sort the remaining posts by pubDate in descending order
        .sort((a, b) => b.data.pubDate.valueOf() - a.data.pubDate.valueOf());

How to deploy Astro to Cloudflare Pages? ⏬

It’s all about using the Cloudflare CLI wrangler properly:

Create the project (you will need to authenticate to Cloudflare):

npx wrangler pages project create #this will install wrangler CLI the first time
npx wrangler pages deploy dist #<BUILD_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY>

Use Wrangler to obtain a list of all available projects for Direct Upload:

npx wrangler pages project list #this are the ones you uploaded already
npx wrangler pages deployment list

One Final Step - Thanks to Project Brackets YT Video!

Remember to go to Cloudflare Web UI -> Workers and pages -> Select the project name as you uploaded with the CLI -> Custom Domains

If your domain is not with Cloudflare, they will ask you to use their Name Authoritative NameServers

Something like: fattouche.ns.cloudflare.com, leanna.ns.cloudflare.com

Cloudflare Authoritative Name Servers

User Management / Authentication

Authentication for the Web.

It works with Authentik! - https://authjs.dev/getting-started/providers/authentik

ith wordpress, mastodon as well :)

Giscus

As seen here

https://github.com/giscus/giscus

MIT | A comment system powered by GitHub Discussions.

Pixel8 Pro - Tricks with a New Android phone.Summarize Youtube Videos with Groq and Streamlit