We’re passionate about open source and grateful for the many maintainers and contributors who make the software world better for everyone. Our team has been fortunate to play a part in the .NET open source ecosystem, with contributions to numerous projects and NuGet packages over the years. We know firsthand that maintaining open source projects is both rewarding and challenging, and we want to do our part in supporting the community.
This time around, we selected Astro as our next open source sponsorship recipient as part of our ongoing commitment to supporting the open source projects that empower our products and community.
What is Astro?
Astro is a cutting-edge static site generator designed to help you build fast, modern websites with ease. Astro improves website performance by rendering components on the server, and sending lightweight HTML to the browser with zero unnecessary JavaScript overhead. Astro supports a wide range of frameworks, including React, Vue, Svelte, and more, letting you use the tools you are familiar with. Its component-based architecture and focus on performance make it a standout choice for developers and content creators alike.
If you’re interested in trying Astro, check out their Getting Started Guide and explore the comprehensive Astro documentation.
Astro Starlight For Documentation
A very exciting part of the Astro ecosystem is Starlight, a purpose-built documentation framework built using Astro. Starlight is designed to make creating beautiful, functional, and easily maintainable documentation sites much easier. It offers features such as built-in search, navigation, dark mode, and more, right out of the box.
At Duende Software, we use Starlight to power our IdentityServer and BFF product documentation (source code on GitHub). Starlight enables us to:
- Write and edit docs in Markdown, making it easy for anyone on our team to contribute.
- Use a Git-based workflow, so every change is tracked, reviewable, and can be deployed quickly.
- Deploy updates frequently to ensure our documentation is always current and accurate.
- Benefit from a polished, user-friendly interface that helps our users find what they need.
Starlight’s focus on developer experience and content quality has transformed how we build and maintain our docs.
Extending Starlight: Plugins and Customization
Starlight is quite opinionated out of the box, which is a good thing, as it means you have fewer choices to make and can focus on content. However, when needed, it provides a lot of extensibility: there’s a growing plugin ecosystem that lets you add new features and integrations.
If you need something custom, you can author your own plugins to tailor your documentation site to your exact needs, or override one of the default components like we did in order to add license information to every page. Another example is where we added “topic” information in the Starlight search results, which we were able to do thanks to Starlight and Astro extensibility (and with the help of the vibrant Astro community).
This flexibility means Starlight can grow with your project, whether you’re building simple docs or a complex knowledge base.
Sponsorship Details
To support the Astro team and their outstanding work, Duende Software is sponsoring Astro for the next 12 months at $250 per month (totaling $3000 for the year). This sponsorship will help the maintainers cover expenses and invest in the project’s growth and promotion.
If you benefit from Astro, consider supporting the project as well. You can contribute in various ways, including financial contributions, code, documentation, or bug reports.
See for Yourself!
We invite you to explore our documentation at docs.duendesoftware.com to see Starlight in action. If you’re looking for a static site generator that combines speed, flexibility, and a fantastic developer experience, give Astro a try. And if you need to build documentation, Starlight is a solution that we highly recommend.
Supporting open source is at the heart of what we do at Duende Software, and we’re proud to help Astro and Starlight continue to grow and innovate.