getting-started.md

Getting Started

Installing Node

From the website

Go to https://nodejs.org/ and follow the instructions for installing version 20.x.x. To run this project at least version 20 is required.

Using Nvm

Nvm (short for Node Version Manager) is a tool that helps with using multiple versions of Node at the same time.

nvm install v20

Then to use the newly installed version of Node type the following for your specific version of Node:

nvm use 20.x.x

Once Node v20 is installed you have access to two new commands node and npm. npm (short for Node Package Manager) is the official package manager provided by Node. It is used to install and manage dependencies. The node command is for running raw .js files, but we will not be using that.

Installing Dependencies

Now run the following command to install the dependencies. This will create a folder in the root directory of the project called node_modules this folder is not to be committed to the GIT (hence its inclusion in the .gitignore).

npm run setup

Alternatively you can run npm install which will also install dependencies, but it will not setup the tools in the prefered way (e.g. disabling astro telemetry)

Running the project

Now that all dependencies are installed you can run the following commands:

• npm run setup - Installs all dependencies and disables astro telemetry - runs "npm i && astro telemetry disable"
• npm run dev - Starts the development server - runs "astro dev"
• npm run start - Starts the development server - runs "astro dev"
• npm run build - Builds and compiles the files into html assets and puts it into the /dist folder. The /dist folder should be put on the file server - runs "astro build"
• npm run preview - Takes the built files from /dist and starts a server to preview the built files - runs "astro preview"
• npm run format:check - Checks which formatting issues exist - runs "prettier --check ."
• npm run format:write - Formats all of the files in the project - runs "prettier --write ."

To start developing you can use npm run start or npm run dev.

Development resources

• All about the config.json
• Project formatting
• What the project structure looks like
• How to link to other pages
• How internationalization works
• How to use icons

Docs

• Components
• Config
• Formatting
• Layouts
• Project Structure
• Icons
• Internationalization
• Linking
• New Guide Sections
• New Guides
• New Pages

Server Configuration

• Basic webserver installation
• Server-side page redirects