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 TOC sidebar, 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 (opens in a new tab) 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 (opens in a new tab).

Start as 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

💡

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 in package.json:

package.json

"scripts": {
  "dev": "next",
  "build": "next build",
  "start": "next start"
},

You can either start the server with, for example if you use npm, npm run dev, which will run in development mode or npm run build && npm run start for production mode.

💡

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 the following next.config.js file in your project’s root directory:

next.config.js

const withNextra = require('nextra')({
  theme: 'nextra-theme-docs',
  themeConfig: './theme.config.jsx'
})
 
module.exports = withNextra()
 
// If you have other Next.js configurations, you can pass them as the parameter:
// module.exports = withNextra({ /* other next.js config */ })

With the above configuration, Nextra can handle Markdown files in your Next.js project, with the specified theme. Other Nextra configurations can be found in Guide.

Create Docs Theme Config

Lastly, create the corresponding theme.config.jsx file in your project’s root directory. This will be used to configure the Nextra Docs theme:

theme.config.jsx

export default {
  logo: <span>My Nextra Documentation</span>,
  project: {
    link: 'https://github.com/shuding/nextra'
  }
  // ... other theme options
}

Full theme configurations can be found here.

Ready to Go!

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

pages/index.mdx

# Welcome to Nextra
 
Hello, world!

And run the next or next dev command specified in package.jsonto start developing the project! 🎉

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

Page Structure Theme Configuration Built-in Components

Docs Theme Page Configuration