Most themes use Astro Content Collections — Markdown files that become typed, queryable data.

How Content Collections Work

A content collection is a folder of Markdown files in src/content/. For example:

src/content/blog/
├── launching-our-product.md
├── design-system-guide.md
└── why-we-chose-astro.md

Each file has frontmatter (metadata) at the top, followed by Markdown content:

---
title: Launching Our Product
description: The story behind our first release.
date: 2026-01-20
category: business
---

We spent six months building this. Here's what we learned.

## The Problem

When we started, we noticed that...

Adding a New Article

  1. Create a new .md file in src/content/blog/
  2. Give it a filename (this becomes the URL slug): my-new-post.md → /blog/my-new-post/
  3. Fill in the frontmatter fields
  4. Write your content in Markdown below the ---

That’s it. The article automatically appears on the blog index page.

Frontmatter Fields

Each theme defines its own schema. Common fields:

FieldTypeRequiredDescription
titlestringYesArticle title
descriptionstringYesShort summary for SEO and cards
datestringYesPublish date (YYYY-MM-DD)
categoryenumYesSection/category slug
coverstringNoPath to cover image
draftbooleanNoIf true, won’t be published

Check your theme’s src/content.config.ts for the exact schema.

Drafts

Set draft: true in frontmatter to keep an article out of production:

---
title: Work in Progress
description: Not ready yet.
date: 2026-02-01
category: insight
draft: true
---

Draft articles won’t appear in the build output.

Markdown Tips

Astro supports standard Markdown plus a few extras:

  • Bold and italic text
  • Links
  • inline code
  • Headings with ## and ###
  • Images: ![Alt text](/img/photo.jpg)
  • Ordered and unordered lists
  • Tables
  • Blockquotes with >

Using a CMS

If you prefer a visual editor instead of writing Markdown, you can connect a headless CMS. LiteInk themes work well with:

  • Ink CMS — Our open-source CMS built for Astro (GitHub)
  • Keystatic — Git-based CMS that writes Markdown files
  • Decap CMS — Git-based, works with GitHub

See the Ink CMS guide for setup instructions.

What’s Next?