About

Morethan-Log for Astro

Sereja
Sereja
July 30, 2025

When it comes to choosing a template for a site, I go feral. It turns into endless procrastination and scrolling through every possible option until I finally find my hidden gem.

That is how I stumbled on morethan-log. The template stuck with me hard, and I tried to port it manually from the original repo, but that did not work out.

So I just gave the task to a layout dev to rebuild the whole template into static HTML, then asked AI agents to port it to my beloved Astro JS and wrap it in a bunch of goodies under the hood. That is how ✨ Morethan-Log for Astro ✨ appeared.

📦 What’s under the hood

  • Multilingual setup (English and Russian out of the box) with a clear way to add new locales via src/config/locales.ts.
  • Search, dark theme, per-language RSS, plus typed frontmatter so you do not forget the description or the date.
  • The whole site structure lives in src/config/site.ts: navigation, categories, contact sections, feature switches, and date formats.
  • Write plain Markdown and plug in MDX with React islands only where you actually want interactivity.
  • Ready-made placeholders for images, Open Graph tags, and other SEO bits, so the page looks good even without custom covers.

🚀 How to start

npm create astro@latest -- --template JustSereja/morethan-log-astro
cd your-blog
npm run dev

The local server waits at http://localhost:4321. Tweak files in src/ and see changes right away. If it is easier to start from a GitHub template, hit the button on the repo, clone your fork, then npm install and npm run dev.

⚙️ Tune it to yourself

  • src/config/site.ts holds the title, descriptions, author, menu, categories, contacts, feature flags, and date formats for each language.
  • src/config/locales.ts lists the languages: code, locale, label, and default. That keeps links and hreflang in sync.
  • You can give every language its own links or even different author names. Emoji and custom SVG icons are supported.
  • Styles sit in public/css/style.css. Change the variables to get your palette. Light and dark themes are already in place.

📝 Content and posts

All posts live in src/content/posts/<lang>/<category>/. To connect translations, keep filenames the same across languages.

---
title: 'New project'
h1: 'New project'
description: 'Short teaser for the cards'
date: '2025-07-30'
announcement: 'Optional text for lists'
image: '/img/posts/your-cover.jpg'
aiGenerated: false
draft: false
---

You almost never need permalink. The folder already defines the language and category. Pages in src/content/pages work the same way.

🎁 A couple of bonuses

  • RSS is generated for each language: /rss.xml for the default and /<lang>/rss.xml for the rest. Subscribers get only their language.
  • In the production build dist/404.html is copied to dist/404/index.html, so GitHub Pages and Netlify keep the 404 page alive.
  • Need a third language? Add it to src/i18n/ui.ts, extend translations, and drop in new content folders.
  • To pull the latest template updates, run make update-template. The script grabs fresh code, updates components and assets, and leaves your content and configs untouched.

The same template runs here on sereja.com. Take it, set it up, and write. If you spot a bug or think of something cool, open an issue on GitHub or just ping me.

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