Blog

The blog feature enables you to deploy a full-featured blog in no time.

info

Check the Blog Plugin API Reference documentation for an exhaustive list of options.

Initial setup

To set up your site's blog, start by creating a blog directory.

Then, add an item link to your blog within docusaurus.config.js:

docusaurus.config.js

module.exports = {
  themeConfig: {
    // ...
    navbar: {
      items: [
        // ...
        {to: 'blog', label: 'Blog', position: 'left'}, // or position: 'right'
      ],
    },
  },
};

Adding posts

To publish in the blog, create a Markdown file within the blog directory.

For example, create a file at website/blog/2019-09-05-hello-docusaurus-v2.md:

website/blog/2019-09-05-hello-docusaurus-v2.md

---
title: Welcome Docusaurus v2
description: This is my first post on Docusaurus 2.
slug: welcome-docusaurus-v2
authors:
  - name: Joel Marcey
    title: Co-creator of Docusaurus 1
    url: https://github.com/JoelMarcey
    image_url: https://github.com/JoelMarcey.png
  - name: Sébastien Lorber
    title: Docusaurus maintainer
    url: https://sebastienlorber.com
    image_url: https://github.com/slorber.png
tags: [hello, docusaurus-v2]
image: https://i.imgur.com/mErPwqL.png
hide_table_of_contents: false
---

Welcome to this blog. This blog is created with [**Docusaurus 2**](https://docusaurus.io/).

<!-- truncate -->

This is my first post on Docusaurus 2.

A whole bunch of exploration to follow.

The front matter is useful to add more metadata to your blog post, for example, author information, but Docusaurus will be able to infer all necessary metadata without the front matter. For all possible fields, see the API documentation.

Blog list

The blog's index page (by default, it is at /blog) is the blog list page, where all blog posts are collectively displayed.

Use the <!--truncate--> marker in your blog post to represent what will be shown as the summary when viewing all published blog posts. Anything above <!--truncate--> will be part of the summary. For example:

website/blog/my-post.md

---
title: Markdown blog truncation example
---

All these will be part of the blog post summary.

<!-- truncate -->

But anything from here on down will not be.

For files using the .mdx extension, use a MDX comment {/* truncate */} instead:

website/blog/my-post.mdx

---
title: MDX blog truncation Example
---

All these will be part of the blog post summary.

{/* truncate */}

But anything from here on down will not be.

By default, 10 posts are shown on each blog list page, but you can control pagination with the postsPerPage option in the plugin configuration. If you set postsPerPage: 'ALL', pagination will be disabled and all posts will be displayed on the first page. You can also add a meta description to the blog list page for better SEO:

docusaurus.config.js

module.exports = {
  // ...
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        blog: {
          blogTitle: 'Docusaurus blog!',
          blogDescription: 'A Docusaurus powered blog!',
          postsPerPage: 'ALL',
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
};

Blog sidebar

The blog sidebar displays recent blog posts. The default number of items shown is 5, but you can customize with the blogSidebarCount option in the plugin configuration. By setting blogSidebarCount: 0, the sidebar will be completely disabled, with the container removed as well. This will increase the width of the main container. Specially, if you have set blogSidebarCount: 'ALL', all posts will be displayed.

You can also alter the sidebar heading text with the blogSidebarTitle option. For example, if you have set blogSidebarCount: 'ALL', instead of the default "Recent posts", you may rather make it say "All posts":

docusaurus.config.js

module.exports = {
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        blog: {
          blogSidebarTitle: 'All posts',
          blogSidebarCount: 'ALL',
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
};

Blog post date

Docusaurus will extract a YYYY-MM-DD date from many patterns such as YYYY-MM-DD-my-blog-post-title.md or YYYY/MM/DD/my-blog-post-title.md. This enables you to easily group blog posts by year, by month, or to use a flat structure.

Supported date extraction patterns

Pattern	Example
Single file	2021-05-28-my-blog-post-title.md
MDX file	2021-05-28-my-blog-post-title.mdx
Single folder + index.md	2021-05-28-my-blog-post-title/index.md
Folder named by date	2021-05-28/my-blog-post-title.md
Nested folders by date	2021/05/28/my-blog-post-title.md
Partially nested folders by date	2021/05-28-my-blog-post-title.md
Nested folders + index.md	2021/05/28/my-blog-post-title/index.md
Date in the middle of path	category/2021/05-28-my-blog-post-title.md

Docusaurus can extract the date from the posts using any of the naming patterns above. It is advisable to choose one pattern and apply it to all posts to avoid confusion.

tip

Using a folder can be convenient to co-locate blog post images alongside the Markdown file.

This naming convention is optional, and you can also provide the date as front matter. Since the front matter follows YAML syntax where the datetime notation is supported, you can use front matter if you need more fine-grained publish dates. For example, if you have multiple posts published on the same day, you can order them according to the time of the day:

earlier-post.md

---
date: 2021-09-13T10:00
---

later-post.md

---
date: 2021-09-13T18:00
---

Blog post authors

Use the authors front matter field to declare blog post authors. An author should have at least a name or an image_url. Docusaurus uses information like url, email, and title, but any other information is allowed.

Inline authors

Blog post authors can be declared directly inside the front matter:

Single author

my-blog-post.md

---
authors:
  name: Joel Marcey
  title: Co-creator of Docusaurus 1
  url: https://github.com/JoelMarcey
  image_url: https://github.com/JoelMarcey.png
  email: jimarcey@gmail.com
---

Multiple authors

my-blog-post.md

---
authors:
  - name: Joel Marcey
    title: Co-creator of Docusaurus 1
    url: https://github.com/JoelMarcey
    image_url: https://github.com/JoelMarcey.png
    email: jimarcey@gmail.com
  - name: Sébastien Lorber
    title: Docusaurus maintainer
    url: https://sebastienlorber.com
    image_url: https://github.com/slorber.png
---

tip

This option works best to get started, or for casual, irregular authors.

info

Prefer using the authors front matter, but the legacy author_* front matter remains supported:

my-blog-post.md

---
author: Joel Marcey
author_title: Co-creator of Docusaurus 1
author_url: https://github.com/JoelMarcey
author_image_url: https://github.com/JoelMarcey.png
---

Global authors

For regular blog post authors, it can be tedious to maintain authors' information inlined in each blog post.

It is possible to declare those authors globally in a configuration file:

website/blog/authors.yml

jmarcey:
  name: Joel Marcey
  title: Co-creator of Docusaurus 1
  url: https://github.com/JoelMarcey
  image_url: https://github.com/JoelMarcey.png
  email: jimarcey@gmail.com

slorber:
  name: Sébastien Lorber
  title: Docusaurus maintainer
  url: https://sebastienlorber.com
  image_url: https://github.com/slorber.png

tip

Use the authorsMapPath plugin option to configure the path. JSON is also supported.

In blog posts front matter, you can reference the authors declared in the global configuration file:

Single author

my-blog-post.md

---
authors: jmarcey
---

Multiple authors

my-blog-post.md

---
authors: [jmarcey, slorber]
---

info

The authors system is very flexible and can suit more advanced use-case:

Mix inline authors and global authors

You can use global authors most of the time, and still use inline authors:

my-blog-post.md

---
authors:
  - jmarcey
  - slorber
  - name: Inline Author name
    title: Inline Author Title
    url: https://github.com/inlineAuthor
    image_url: https://github.com/inlineAuthor
---

Local override of global authors

You can customize the global author's data on per-blog-post basis:

my-blog-post.md

---
authors:
  - key: jmarcey
    title: Joel Marcey's new title
  - key: slorber
    name: Sébastien Lorber's new name
---

Localize the author's configuration file

The configuration file can be localized, just create a localized copy of it at:

website/i18n/[locale]/docusaurus-plugin-content-blog/authors.yml

An author, either declared through front matter or through the authors map, needs to have a name or an avatar, or both. If all authors of a post don't have names, Docusaurus will display their avatars compactly. See this test post for the effect.

Feed generation

RSS feeds require the author's email to be set for the author to appear in the feed.

Reading time

Docusaurus generates a reading time estimation for each blog post based on word count. We provide an option to customize this.

docusaurus.config.js

module.exports = {
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        blog: {
          showReadingTime: true, // When set to false, the "x min read" won't be shown
          readingTime: ({content, frontMatter, defaultReadingTime}) =>
            defaultReadingTime({content, options: {wordsPerMinute: 300}}),
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
};

The readingTime callback receives three parameters: the blog content text as a string, front matter as a record of string keys and their values, and the default reading time function. It returns a number (reading time in minutes) or undefined (disable reading time for this page).

The default reading time is able to accept additional options: wordsPerMinute as a number (default: 300), and wordBound as a function from string to boolean. If the string passed to wordBound should be a word bound (spaces, tabs, and line breaks by default), the function should return true.

tip

Use the callback for all your customization needs:

Per-post disabling

Disable reading time on one page:

docusaurus.config.js

module.exports = {
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        blog: {
          showReadingTime: true,
          readingTime: ({content, frontMatter, defaultReadingTime}) =>
            frontMatter.hide_reading_time
              ? undefined
              : defaultReadingTime({content}),
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
};

Usage:

---
hide_reading_time: true
---

This page will no longer display the reading time stats!

Passing options

Pass options to the default reading time function:

docusaurus.config.js

module.exports = {
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        blog: {
          readingTime: ({content, defaultReadingTime}) =>
            defaultReadingTime({content, options: {wordsPerMinute: 100}}),
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
};

Using custom algorithms

Use a custom implementation of reading time:

docusaurus.config.js

const myReadingTime = require('./myReadingTime');

module.exports = {
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        blog: {
          readingTime: ({content}) => myReadingTime(content),
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
};

Feed

You can generate RSS / Atom / JSON feed by passing feedOptions. By default, RSS and Atom feeds are generated. To disable feed generation, set feedOptions.type to null.

type FeedType = 'rss' | 'atom' | 'json';

type BlogOptions = {
  feedOptions?: {
    type?: FeedType | 'all' | FeedType[] | null;
    title?: string;
    description?: string;
    copyright: string;
    language?: string; // possible values: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/dirlang.html#langcodes
    /** Allow control over the construction of BlogFeedItems */
    createFeedItems?: (params: {
      blogPosts: BlogPost[];
      siteConfig: DocusaurusConfig;
      outDir: string;
      defaultCreateFeedItems: (params: {
        blogPosts: BlogPost[];
        siteConfig: DocusaurusConfig;
        outDir: string;
      }) => Promise<BlogFeedItem[]>;
    }) => Promise<BlogFeedItem[]>;
  };
};

Example usage:

docusaurus.config.js

module.exports = {
  // ...
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        blog: {
          feedOptions: {
            type: 'all',
            copyright: `Copyright © ${new Date().getFullYear()} Facebook, Inc.`,
            createFeedItems: async (params) => {
              const {blogPosts, defaultCreateFeedItems, ...rest} = params;
              return defaultCreateFeedItems({
                // keep only the 10 most recent blog posts in the feed
                blogPosts: blogPosts.filter((item, index) => index < 10),
                ...rest,
              });
            },
          },
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
};

The feeds can be found at:

RSS

https://example.com/blog/rss.xml

Atom

https://example.com/blog/atom.xml

JSON

https://example.com/blog/feed.json

Advanced topics

Blog-only mode

You can run your Docusaurus 2 site without a dedicated landing page and instead have your blog's post list page as the index page. Set the routeBasePath to be '/' to serve the blog through the root route example.com/ instead of the subroute example.com/blog/.

docusaurus.config.js

module.exports = {
  // ...
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        docs: false, // Optional: disable the docs plugin
        blog: {
          routeBasePath: '/', // Serve the blog at the site's root
          /* other blog options */
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
};

caution

Don't forget to delete the existing homepage at ./src/pages/index.js or else there will be two files mapping to the same route!

tip

There's also a "Docs-only mode" for those who only want to use the docs. Read Docs-only mode for detailed instructions or a more elaborate explanation of routeBasePath.

Multiple blogs

By default, the classic theme assumes only one blog per website and hence includes only one instance of the blog plugin. If you would like to have multiple blogs on a single website, it's possible too! You can add another blog by specifying another blog plugin in the plugins option for docusaurus.config.js.

Set the routeBasePath to the URL route that you want your second blog to be accessed on. Note that the routeBasePath here has to be different from the first blog or else there could be a collision of paths! Also, set path to the path to the directory containing your second blog's entries.

As documented for multi-instance plugins, you need to assign a unique ID to the plugins.

docusaurus.config.js

module.exports = {
  // ...
  plugins: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/plugin-content-blog',
      {
        /**
         * Required for any multi-instance plugin
         */
        id: 'second-blog',
        /**
         * URL route for the blog section of your site.
         * *DO NOT* include a trailing slash.
         */
        routeBasePath: 'my-second-blog',
        /**
         * Path to data on filesystem relative to site dir.
         */
        path: './my-second-blog',
      },
    ],
  ],
};

As an example, we host a second blog here.