Set Up Astro Tone in Ten Minutes

The starter is a small Astro site. By the end of this post you will have your name on the home page, one real post, and a deploy that points to your domain.

Skip any step that does not apply.

Install

The dev server runs at http://localhost:4321. If the port is taken, Astro picks the next free one and prints it.

Edit one config file

Open astro-theme-config.ts. This is the only file you need to touch for site-wide settings.

Three rules:

1. url is the production origin. Set base only when deploying under a subpath, such as GitHub Pages project sites.
2. title shows in the browser tab and in social previews.
3. logoLabel is the text in the header next to the home link. Keep it short — it sits in a 52px bar.

The other fields can wait.

Know where things live

The starter keeps the public surface small. Most changes happen in one of these places:

Use astro-theme-config.ts first. Reach into src/styles/ for site-level styles, prose, page layouts, and shared behavior. Reach into src/components/ when component structure or component-owned styles need to change.

Decide what the header shows

nav is empty by default. The logo links home, the theme toggle sits on the right, and that is it.

If you want header links:

Footer links live in footerNav and stay visible regardless. A quiet header with a useful footer is a fine combination.

Write the first post

Posts live in src/content/blog/. The filename becomes the URL slug.

Create src/content/blog/hello.md:

Required: title, description, pubDate. Everything else is optional.

• draft: true keeps the post out of the build, the RSS feed, and the search index.
• category powers the filter row on /blog. Pick from config.content.categoryOrder or add a new one.
• heroImage is a relative path to a file inside src/assets/. It feeds cards, social metadata, and structured data; place the image in the Markdown body too when the post should show it inline.
• homeHeroOrder: 1 pins a post into one of the two compact links at the top of the home page. Lower numbers appear first; unpinned posts fill any empty slots by publish date.
• homeFeatured: true pins one post to the large feature card on the home page.
• homeOrder: 1 pins a post into the home page grid. Lower numbers appear first; unpinned posts fill any empty slots by publish date.
• focusEffect: 'scroll-dark' enables the optional scroll dark effect for that post. It turns on after the reader passes roughly the first 20% of the article body and restores the previous theme near the top. The trigger point is set by the theme; it is not section-specific.

Replace the samples

The starter ships with sample posts to exercise the layout. Replace or delete them before you publish.

The fastest path:

1. Keep this guide if you find it useful.
2. Delete the others from src/content/blog/.
3. Add three or four of your own.

The blog index, RSS, related posts, and search update on the next build.

Run the checks

Before deploying:

check runs Astro's type checks. build writes the static site and the Pagefind search index to dist/. preview serves the built output so you can click through it once.

If check fails, fix it before deploying. Type errors in the starter usually point at a missing field in astro-theme-config.ts.

Deploy

Tone builds to dist/. Most hosts only need:

Vercel, Netlify, and Cloudflare Pages all detect Astro automatically. Import the repository, accept the defaults, deploy.

After the first live deploy, set site.url in astro-theme-config.ts to the real domain and redeploy. Canonical links, RSS, sitemap, and social previews all depend on it.

If you deploy under a subpath such as username.github.io/repo, set site.base in astro-theme-config.ts before publishing. The Astro config reads that value for you.

The bundled GitHub Pages workflow sets ASTRO_SITE_URL and ASTRO_SITE_BASE automatically for project pages. For example, a repository named my-blog deploys with /my-blog; a user site repository named username.github.io deploys at the domain root.

Enable comments (optional)

Comments are off by default. To turn on giscus:

1. Visit https://giscus.app and pick a repository with Discussions enabled.
2. Copy the four values it generates (repo, repoId, category, categoryId) into config.comments.giscus.
3. Set config.comments.mode to giscus for the original widget, or giscus-custom for the Tone-styled widget.

The component renders nothing until all four values are present. There is no half-enabled state.

What to read next

• Markdown You Will Actually Use — the prose styles in one page.
• Change the Look in One File — color, spacing, type.
• When to Reach for MDX — using an Astro component inside a post.