Gridsome Starter Briefly

Overview

Briefly is a minimal blog starter for Gridsome, based on Dylan Smith’s personal website design and styled with Tailwind CSS. This theme is designed to provide a clean and modern look for a personal blog. It offers several key features to enhance the blogging experience, including a sitemap, RSS feed, Google Analytics integration, custom 404 page, code syntax highlighting, image lightbox, Open Graph meta tags for posts, and more.

Features

• Sitemap: Automatically generates a sitemap for better SEO optimization.
• RSS Feed: Provides an RSS feed to allow users to subscribe to your blog.
• Google Analytics: Integrates with Google Analytics to track website traffic and user behavior.
• Custom 404 Page: Displays a custom 404 page when a user encounters a broken link.
• Code Syntax Highlighting: Highlights code snippets in blog posts for better readability.
• Medium-Like Image Lightbox: Allows users to view images in a lightbox for a better viewing experience.
• Open Graph Meta Tags for Posts: Generates Open Graph meta tags for social media sharing.
• Alternative Index Page: Provides an alternative index page with a paginated posts list.
• Post Descriptions: Automatically generates post descriptions or allows users to define their own.
• Localized Post Dates: Displays post dates in the user’s preferred locale using moment.js.
• Index Page Post Filtering: Allows users to filter posts on the index page by length.
• Post Warnings: Displays a warning for posts older than 1 year (configurable).

Installation

To install Briefly, it is recommended to use the gridsome create command, which automatically removes the .git folder and installs the necessary NPM dependencies. Alternatively, you can clone the repository and set it up manually.

1. Install Briefly using gridsome create:

   gridsome create my-blog dylantyates/briefly#main
   cd my-blog
   

2. Configure Briefly by referring to the documentation in the “Getting Started” demo post.

3. Start a local development server with:

   gridsome develop
   

   or build the static site into the dist folder with:

   gridsome build
   

   For more information on development and deployment, consult the Gridsome documentation.

Summary

Briefly is a minimal blog starter designed for Gridsome. It offers various features to enhance the blogging experience, including SEO optimization, integration with Google Analytics, code syntax highlighting, image lightbox, and more. With easy installation and customization options, Briefly provides a clean and modern look for personal blogs.