Gatsby Timeline Theme

A Gatsby theme for creating a blog.

Live Demo

Features

• Support Mdx, tweet, instagram medias, youtube videos, hacker news, reddit post
• Support i18n by gatsby-theme-i18n, you can choose your own i18n library
• Support comments disqus or utterances
• Support Tags
• Pagination, even tag page supports pagination
• SEO Optimization

Installation

For a new site

If you’re creating a new site and want to use the timeline theme, you can use the timeline theme starter. This will generate a new site that pre-configures use of the timeline theme.

1. Create a Gatsby site.

   Use the Gatsby CLI to create a new site, specifying the timeline blog theme starter.

   # create a new Gatsby site using the timeline blog theme starter
   gatsby new my-themed-blog https://github.com/theowenyoung/gatsby-starter-timeline

2. Create twitter credentials

   Optional, if you want to add your tweets to blog, create .env with the following content:

   TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY=xx
   TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET=xx
   TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN=xx
   TWITTER_ACCESS_SECRET=xx

   Then, uncomment gatsby-config.js plugin gatsby-source-twitter

3. Create instagram credentials

   Optional, if you want to add your instagram to blog, create .env with the following content:

   INSTAGRAM_ACCESS_TOKEN=xx

   See How to get instagram access token

   Then, uncomment gatsby-config.js plugin gatsby-source-instagram

4. Start developing.

   Navigate into your new site’s directory and start it up.

   cd my-themed-blog/
   gatsby develop

5. Open the code and start customizing!

   Your site is now running at http://localhost:8000!

For an existing site

If you already have a site you’d like to add the timeline theme to, you can manually configure it.

1. Install the timeline theme

   npm install gatsby-theme-timeline theme-ui

2. Add the configuration to your gatsby-config.js file

   // gatsby-config.js
   module.exports = {
     plugins: [
       {
         resolve: `gatsby-theme-timeline`,
         options: {
           // basePath defaults to `/`
           basePath: `/blog`,
         },
       },
     ],
   }

3. Add blog posts to your site by creating md or mdx files inside /content/posts.

   Note that if you’ve changed the default contentPath in the configuration, you’ll want to add your markdown files in the directory specified by that path.

4. Optional, Add tweets to your site, there are 2 ways for adding tweets:

   1. By creating .json files inside /data/tweets, you can use Actionsflow to auto sync your tweets, for example my blog, source, site source

   2. By using gatsby-source-twitter, for example:

   {
     plugins: [
       {
         resolve: `gatsby-source-twitter`,
         options: {
           credentials: {
             consumer_key: process.env.TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY,
             consumer_secret: process.env.TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET,
             access_token_key: process.env.TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN,
             access_token_secret: process.env.TWITTER_ACCESS_SECRET,
           },
           queries: {
             MyTweet: {
               endpoint: "statuses/user_timeline",
               params: {
                 screen_name: "TheOwenYoung",
                 include_rts: true,
                 tweet_mode: "extended",
               },
             },
           },
         },
       },
       {
         resolve: `gatsby-theme-timeline`,
         options: {
           tweetTypeName: ["TweetsJson", "twitterStatusesUserTimelineMyTweet"],
         },
       },
     ]
   }

5. Optional, add instagram posts to your site, there are 2 ways for adding tweets:

   1. By creating .json files inside /data/instagram, you can use Actionsflow to auto sync your instagram posts, for example my blog, source, site source

   2. By using @theowenyoung/gatsby-source-instagram, for example:

   {
      resolve: `@theowenyoung/gatsby-source-instagram`,
      options: {
        access_token: process.env.INSTAGRAM_ACCESS_TOKEN,
        paginate: 100,
        maxPosts: 1000,
      },
    },

   See How to get instagram access token

6. Add an image with the file name avatar (can be jpg or png) inside the /assets directory to include a small image next to the footer on every post page.

   Note that if you’ve changed the default assetPath in the configuration, you’ll want to add your asset files in the directory specified by that path.

7. Run your site using gatsby develop and navigate to your blog posts. If you used the above configuration, your URL will be http://localhost:8000/blog

Usage

Theme options

More options see utils/default-options.js

Example configuration

// gatsby-config.js
module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    {
      resolve: `gatsby-theme-timeline`,
      options: {
        // basePath defaults to `/`
        basePath: `/blog`,
        prismPreset: `prism-okaidia`,
      },
    },
  ],
}

Additional configuration

In addition to the theme options, there are a handful of items you can customize via the siteMetadata object in your site’s gatsby-config.js

// gatsby-config.js
module.exports = {
  siteMetadata: {
    // Used for the site title and SEO
    title: `My Blog Title`,
    // Used to provide alt text for your avatar
    author: `My Name`,
    // Used for SEO
    description: `My site description...`,
    // Used for resolving images in social cards
    siteUrl: `https://example.com`,
    // Used for links in the root aside
    menuLinks: [
      {
        name: `Twitter`,
        url: `https://twitter.com/TheOwenYoung`,
        external: true,
      },
      {
        name: `GitHub`,
        url: `https://github.com/theowenyoung`,
      },
    ],
    social: [
      {
        name: `Twitter`,
        url: `https://twitter.com/TheOwenYoung`,
        external: true,
      },
      {
        name: `GitHub`,
        url: `https://github.com/theowenyoung`,
      },
    ],
  },
}

Blog Post Fields

The following are the defined blog post fields based on the node interface in the schema

Image Behavior

Blog posts can include references to images inside frontmatter. Note that this works for a relative path as shown below, or an external URL.

---
title: Hello World (example)
date: 2019-04-15
image: ./some-image.jpg
---

image refers to the featured image at the top of a post and is not required. It will also appear as the preview image inside a social card. Note that this requires you to set siteUrl in your gatsby-config.js file metadata to your site’s domain.

When adding an image, imageAlt is available to provide alt text for the featured image within the post. If this is not included, it defaults to the post excerpt.

You may want to use a different image for social sharing than the one that appears in your blog post. You can do so by setting socialImage in frontmatter.

How Styles work

This theme enables gatsby-plugin-theme-ui which allows you to leverage Theme UI to style your project.

By default, gatsby-theme-ui-timeline-preset operates as your base theme styles. Any local shadowed styles deep merge with that preset.

Alternatively, you can pass a preset of your own choosing by installing the package and passing the package name as the preset in gatsby-config.js. Again, local shadowed styles will deep merge with this preset if they exist.

// gatsby-config.js
module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    {
      resolve: `gatsby-theme-timeline`,
      options: {
        preset: `my-preset-name-here`,
      },
    },
  ],
}

If you’d rather use only local shadowed styles with no underlying preset, pass the preset option as false.

Prism

You can also configure your prism theme for syntax highlighting in code snippets by passing the prismPreset option.

@theme-ui/prism is included by default, so any available presets can be passed using only their name, e.g. dracula. The default value is github

// gatsby-config.js
module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    {
      resolve: `gatsby-theme-timeline`,
      options: {
        prismPreset: `github`,
      },
    },
  ],
}

As an alternative, you can install a package with a prism theme into your project and pass the package name.

This option is null by default, and in all cases local shadowed styles take precedent.

Highlight Line

You can highlight code snippets using // highlight line or a combination of and // highlight-end.

To update the styling for these highlights override the .highlight styles inside your prism theme.

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