With minimal styling and maximum features — including multiple homepage layouts, built-in social sharing and dark mode — Novela makes it easy to start publishing beautiful articles and stories with Gatsby.

Novela is built by the team at Narative, and built for everyone that loves the web.

Special thanks to @jpvalery for helping maintain Novela.

We have stopped maintainig this project. There will be occassional PR reviews and merges of significant errors but do not expect any changes or responses to support questions in the future. Thank you to everyone that has contributed and continues to use and learn from Novela.

• Why Novela?

• Getting Started

  • With Gatsby Starter Novela

    • Installation
    • Develop & Build

  • From scratch

    • Installation
    • Folder structure
    • Using Novela Theme
    • Adding a Post
    • Configuring Site Metadata

• Data Sources

  • Local

• Customization

  • Changing styles
  • Component shadowing
  • Using images
  • Adding your logo
  • Adding Mailchimp

• Data Models

  • Theme Options
  • Post
  • Site Metadata

• Future

  
  

This guide will take you through setting up Novela with Gatsby Starter Novela.

gatsby new novela-site https://github.com/narative/gatsby-starter-novela

git clone [email protected]:narative/gatsby-starter-novela.git novela-site

cd novela-site

yarn

Once installed or cloned locally and all packages are installed you can begin developing your site.

# Run localhost
yarn dev

# Build your Gatsby site
yarn build

To learn more about adding Posts, and Site Metadata see:

• Adding a Post
• Configuring Site Metadata

This guide will take you through adding Novela to a new project. You do not require any Gatsby starters or similar, but you can add Novela to an existing Gatsby project.

You can also view the completed example repository.

# Create an empty directory and go into it
mkdir novela-site && cd novela-site

# Add all required dependencies
yarn add react react-dom gatsby @narative/gatsby-theme-novela

Once you've installed React, Gatsby, and Novela you'll want to add your first Post.

The recommended project structure for your content and site looks like this:

  novela-site
    ├── content
    │ └── posts
    │     └── 2020-01-01-my-first-novela-post
    │         ├── images
    │         │   └── novela-hero.jpg
    │         └── index.mdx
    ├── node_modules
    ├── gatsby-config.js
    └── package.json

You must add @narative/gatsby-theme-novela as a plugin in gatsby-config.js. @narative/gatsby-theme-novela is configurable through plugin options but we will use the defaults for now.

// gatsby-config.js

module.exports = {
  plugins: ['@narative/gatsby-theme-novela'],
};

Once you've setup @narative/gatsby-theme-novela plugin in gatsby-config.js you can start creating your first Posts.

Start by creating a new folder in content/posts. You can name it anything you like but we recommend including the date at the front to organize your posts. Once you've created your folder you can add an index.mdx file and an images folder.

/content/posts/2020-01-01/index.mdx

---
title: Why Narative loves Gatsby
date: 2019-04-27
hero: ./images/narative-gatsby-hero.jpg
excerpt: This is a love story about Narative and Gatsby
---
# And then under the heading YML you can insert any MDX you like
# like headings, links, code, images, etc
# This will show up in the body of your post
# ...

In order to configure the theme to properly generate the pages and meta tags you must add specific data to siteMetadata.

The fields that are unique to Novela are hero.heading, hero.maxWidth, and social.

Add your Site Metadata to the gatsby-config.js file.

// gatsby-config.js

module.exports = {
  siteMetadata: {
    title: `Novela by Narative`,
    name: `Narative`,
    siteUrl: `https://gatsby-theme-novela.netlify.com`,
    description: `This is my description that will be used in the meta tags and important for search results`,

    // important to set the main text that appears in the hero
    hero: {
      heading: `Perspectives on technology, design and business from the team at Narative.`,
      maxWidth: 652,
    },
    social: [
      {
        name: `twitter`,
        url: `https://twitter.com/narative`,
      },
      {
        name: `github`,
        url: `https://github.com/narative`,
      },
    ],
  },
  plugins: ['@narative/gatsby-theme-novela'],
};

Once all steps have been completed you can run your site. In the root of your project run gatsby develop.

If you ran into problems you can reference the example repository or create an issue.

• Data Sources

Local is the default data source for Novela. Write MDX and YAML in order to generate posts. This is the fastest and simplest way to get started.

To learn how to use the local file system, read the Installation steps.

Once you've created the Logo component it should automatically appear in your site.

The technique we have used is called Component Shadowing and is a core feature of Gatsby Themes.

Novela allows you to change the default theme styling by updating the theme-ui values. If you're familiar with Styled Components or Emotion it's the same as adapting the theme you pass to ThemeProvider.

First, you must create a theme file and then you can override novelaTheme values. See all Novela theme values

// src/gatsby-plugin-theme-ui/index.js

import novelaTheme from '@narative/gatsby-theme-novela/src/gatsby-plugin-theme-ui';

export default {
  ...novelaTheme,
  initialColorMode: `dark`,
  colors: {
    ...novelaTheme.colors,
    primary: '#000',
    secondary: '#73737D',
    accent: '#6166DC',
    grey: '#73737D',
    background: '#fff',
  },
};

This feature allows users to override a component in order to customize its rendering.

Component Shadowing lets you replace the theme’s original file, gatsby-theme-novela/src/components/Logo.js, with your own to implement any changes you need.

Any component or section is able to be replaced with your own custom component.

This opens up a full customization of Novela to your designed needs. You can copy any component directly from Novela and alter it how you like, or you can create your own component to replace Novela's entirely.

A basic example of component shadowing is explained below by adding your logo.

Images can be added to Posts and customized to fit your content. Define a regular Markdown image that will default to Small or write HTML to customize the sizes. All images can be clicked to zoom.

![This is the alt text for small image](./images/small.jpg)

<div className="Image__Small">
  <img src="./images/small.jpg" alt="This is the alt text small image" />
</div>

<div className="Image__Medium">
  <img src="./images/medium.jpg" alt="This is the alt text medium image" />
</div>

<div className="Image__Large">
  <img src="./images/large.jpg" alt="This is the alt text large image" />
</div>

Your logo must be in SVG (vector) format in order to add it to the theme. This is required because we will be making a React component containing your SVG Logo.

Start by creating the component file at:

  novela-site
  └── src
    └── @narative
      └── gatsby-theme-novela
        └── components
          └── Logo
            └── index.js

It is important you create the exact folder structure so Gatsby knows to shadow this component. Once the file is created you can create your Logo component.

import React from 'react';

/**
 * Paste in your SVG logo and return it from this component.
 * Make sure you have a height set for your logo.
 * It is recommended to keep the height within 25-35px.
 * Logo comes with a property value called `fill`. `fill` is useful 
 * when you want to change your logo depending on the theme you are on. 
 */
export default function Logo({ fill }) {
  return (
    <svg viewBox="0 0 106 28" height="30px">
      <path d="M62.9 12h2.8v10...." />
      <path fill={fill} d="M25 14h-..." />
      <path d="M14 0C6.3..." fill="#639" />
    </svg>
  );
}

Want to add a subscription newsletter to your Posts? Novela gives you the option to integrate and build your following in a few easy steps.

Start by downloading gatsby-plugin-mailchimp:

yarn add gatsby-plugin-mailchimp

Then configure the plugins

plugins: [
  {
    resolve: '@narative/gatsby-theme-novela',
    options: {
      contentPosts: 'content/posts',
      basePath: '/',
      mailchimp: true, // make sure this is true!
    },
  },
  {
    resolve: 'gatsby-plugin-mailchimp',
    options: {
      endpoint: '', // add your MC list endpoint here; see plugin repo for instructions
    },
  },
];

That's it. You will now have subscription boxes on each of your Posts. To disable the subscription box on individual Posts you can set subscription: false on the Post.

You can shadow the Subscription component to customize the text displayed. It is recommended to copy and paste the current component and only alter the text.

You will want to override it here:

  novela-site
  └── src
    └── @narative
      └── gatsby-theme-novela
        └── components
          └── Subscription
            └── index.js

It is recommended to use the Default options, but if your project requires something else you can configure them to your need.

View Theme option example

plugins: [
  {
    resolve: '@narative/gatsby-theme-novela',
    options: {
      contentPosts: 'content/posts',
      rootPath: '/',
      basePath: '/',
      pageLength: 6,
      mailchimp: true,
      sources: {
        local: true,
      },
    },
  },
];

View Post example

# novela-site/content/posts/2020-01-01/index.mdx
---
title: Why Narative loves Gatsby
date: 2019-04-27
hero: ./images/narative-gatsby-hero.jpg
excerpt: This is a love story about Narative and Gatsby
---
# And then under the heading YML you can insert any MDX you like
# like headings, links, code, images, etc
# This will show up in the body of your post
# ...

View Site Metadata example

Within gatsby-config.js you can configure siteMetadata to show the values you wish. It is required to add siteMetada

// gatsby-config.js
module.exports = {
  siteMetadata: {
    title: `Novela by Narative`,
    name: `Narative`,
    siteUrl: `https://gatsby-theme-novela.netlify.com`,
    description: `This is my description that will be used in the meta tags and important for search results`,

    // hero
    // A required key and will be displayed on the main page of Noveal
    hero: {
      heading: `Perspectives on technology, design and business from the team at Narative.`,
      maxWidth: 652,
    },

    // social
    // Add in the social links that will be displayed in the footer
    social: [
      {
        url: `https://twitter.com/narative`,
      },
      {
        url: `https://github.com/narative`,
      },
      {
        url: `https://www.instagram.com/narative.co/`,
      },
      {
        url: `https://dribbble.com/narativestudio`,
      },
      {
        name: 'stackoverflow',
        url: `https://bit.ly/1x0885j`,
      },
    ],
  },
};

There are many Gatsby themes to choose from. Here’s why we think you won’t regret choosing Novela:

Choose between a variable width grid or a simpler list style to display each story.

Start building an audience and grow your blog subscribers with Mailchimp.

Out of the box, Novela includes both light and dark designs that can be toggled by the user anywhere across the site.

Consistent, easy-to-read code lets you quickly customize every color and setting.

High quality embedded codeblocks that make technical blog posts a breeze.

Users can select text within an article to copy or share to platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn.

Read time is automatically generated for each article based on length, with an animated bar tracking the reader’s progress through each piece.

Navigable by cursor or keyboard, readable via screens and screen readers, Novela ensures everyone on the web can read what you write.

This project is early in development and we are interested in creating an even more extensible experience, and increased out-of-box functionality, including:

• Built in search with Algolia or similar
• Tags, categories, and more
• More theme variations
• More customization options