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Docs Theme

Nextra docs theme is a theme that includes almost everything you need to build a modern documentation website. It includes a top navigation bar, a search bar, a pages sidebar, a Table of Contents (TOC), and other built-in components.

This website itself is built with the Nextra docs theme.

Quick Start from Template

Deploy to Vercel

You can start by creating your own Nextra site and deploying to Vercel by clicking the link:

Vercel will fork the Nextra docs template  and deploy the site for you. Once done, every commit in the repository will be deployed automatically.

Fork the Template

You can also manually fork the template repository .

Start as a New Project

Install

To create a Nextra docs site manually, you have to install Next.js, React, Nextra, and Nextra docs theme. In your project directory, run the following command to install the dependencies:

npm i next react react-dom nextra nextra-theme-docs
Note

If you already have Next.js installed in your project, you only need to install nextra and nextra-theme-docs as the add-ons.

Add the following scripts to your package.json:

package.json
"scripts": {
  "dev": "next",
  "build": "next build",
  "start": "next start"
},
💡
Tip

You can enable Turbopack in development by appending the --turbopack flag to the dev command:

package.json
- "dev": "next",
+ "dev": "next --turbopack",

You can start the server in development mode with the following command according to your package manager:

npm run dev

or in production mode:

npm run build
npm run start
Note

If you’re not familiar with Next.js, note that development mode is significantly slower since Next.js compiles every page you navigate to.

Add Next.js Config

Create a next.config.mjs file in your project’s root directory with the following content:

next.config.mjs
import nextra from 'nextra'
 
const withNextra = nextra({
  // ... Other Nextra config options
})
 
// You can include other Next.js configuration options here, in addition to Nextra settings:
export default withNextra({
  // ... Other Next.js config options
})

With this configuration, Nextra will handle Markdown files in your Next.js project. For more Nextra configuration options, check out the Guide.

Add Next.js Config

mdx-components.js
import { useMDXComponents as getDocsMDXComponents } from 'nextra-theme-docs'
 
const docsComponents = getDocsMDXComponents()
 
export function useMDXComponents(components) {
  return {
    ...docsComponents,
    ...components
  }
}
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Tip

You can use .jsx, .ts and .tsx extensions for your mdx-components file as well.

Add mdx-components.js in root directory

Lastly, create the root layout of your application in app folder. This will be used to configure the Nextra docs theme:

app/layout.jsx
import { Footer, Layout, Navbar } from 'nextra-theme-docs'
import { Banner, Head } from 'nextra/components'
import { getPageMap } from 'nextra/page-map'
import 'nextra-theme-docs/style.css'
 
export const metadata = {
  // ... Your metadata API
  // https://nextjs.org/docs/app/building-your-application/optimizing/metadata
}
 
const banner = <Banner storageKey="some-key">Nextra 4.0 is released 🎉</Banner>
const navbar = (
  <Navbar
    logo={<b>Nextra</b>}
    // ... Your additional navbar options
  />
)
const footer = <Footer>MIT {new Date().getFullYear()} © Nextra.</Footer>
 
export default async function RootLayout({ children }) {
  return (
    <html
      // Not required, but good for SEO
      lang="en"
      // Required to be set
      dir="ltr"
      // Suggested by `next-themes` package https://github.com/pacocoursey/next-themes#with-app
      suppressHydrationWarning
    >
      <Head
      // ... Your additional head options
      >
        {/* Your additional tags should be passed as `children` of `<Head>` element */}
      </Head>
      <body>
        <Layout
          banner={banner}
          navbar={navbar}
          pageMap={await getPageMap()}
          docsRepositoryBase="https://github.com/shuding/nextra/tree/main/docs"
          footer={footer}
          // ... Your additional layout options
        >
          {children}
        </Layout>
      </body>
    </html>
  )
}

Ready to Go!

Now, you can create your first MDX page as content/index.mdx:

content/index.mdx
# Welcome to Nextra
 
Hello, world!

And run the dev command specified in package.json to start developing the project! 🎉

npm run dev

Next, check out the next section to learn about organizing the documentation structure and configuring the website theme:

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Docs ThemePage Configuration