Dong Blog

Dong Blog is an open-source Astro blog theme for publishing long-form posts and short posts from fully typed Markdown and MDX content, with site-wide settings defined in the same source tree. The repository's author, riceball-tw, states the theme was extracted from years of running a personal blog and released as a reusable template under the MIT license.

What is Dong Blog?

Dong Blog is a blog theme built on Astro, distributed as a repository you clone and deploy as your own site rather than install as a package. You supply content as Markdown or MDX files plus site configuration, and it produces a static blog with posts, short posts, paginated listings, Open Graph images, and a client-side search index. It ships with a GitHub Actions pipeline that runs CI checks and deploys to either Cloudflare Pages or GitHub Pages, and it can also be built into a Docker image.

Key Features

• Astro-based build — the project ships as an Astro app configured through astro.config.mjs, where you set the deployed site URL.
• Speed-optimized output — the README claims a 100% Lighthouse score; Lighthouse is also wired into the CI pipeline.
• Built-in i18n — translations used by Astro templates live in /src/i18n, so multilingual sites are supported out of the box.
• Dual content types — both full post and shortpost collections are rendered, and the GitHub Pages demo links to live examples of each.
• Open Graph image generation — OG images are generated through Vercel's vercel/og with caching enabled.
• Pagefind search — a static, client-side page search built on Pagefind.
• Code and diagram rendering — syntax-highlighted code blocks via expressive-code and Mermaid diagrams via remark-mermaid.
• Google Analytics — analytics integration included in the theme configuration.
• CI/CD pipeline — TypeScript checks, the Biome linter, Cypress end-to-end tests, and Lighthouse run in a GitHub Actions workflow (testing-and-deploy-pipeline.yml), with deployment to Cloudflare Pages or GitHub Pages.

Who is it for?

• Developers who write technical posts: the expressive-code blocks and Mermaid diagram support fit posts that include code samples and architecture diagrams.
• Bloggers publishing short updates alongside long articles: the separate shortpost collection handles brief notes without the full post layout.
• Anyone building a multilingual personal site: the /src/i18n translation folder provides the scaffolding for more than one language.
• Self-hosters: the Docker build path and the GitHub Pages / Cloudflare Pages deploy targets suit people who want to own the hosting.

What can you do with Dong Blog?

• Publish a personal blog: clone the repo, edit content in /src/content, set your site URL, and deploy the ./dist folder wherever you like.
• Deploy through a pipeline: configure .env from .env.example and let the included GitHub Actions workflow run Biome, Cypress, and Lighthouse before deploying.
• Generate share images automatically: rely on the vercel/og integration so each post gets an Open Graph image without manual screenshots.

How does Dong Blog work?

1. Clone the repository and run pnpm install.
2. Start the dev server with pnpm run dev, or produce a production build with pnpm build and preview it with pnpm preview.
3. Customize in these locations: astro.config.mjs for site settings, /src/content for config and posts, /src/i18n for translations, /public and /src/assets for assets, and /src/styles/global.css for styles.

Pricing

Free and open source under the MIT license.

FAQ

What is Dong Blog built with?

Dong Blog is an Astro theme using TypeScript, Tailwind CSS (listed among the repository topics), expressive-code, remark-mermaid, Pagefind, and vercel/og. CI adds Biome, Cypress, and Lighthouse.

Does Dong Blog support search?

Yes. Page search is provided by Pagefind, which builds a static index, so search works without a backend server.

Can I host Dong Blog for free?

Yes. The theme documents deployment to Cloudflare Pages or GitHub Pages through its included GitHub Actions workflow, and a public GitHub Pages demo is linked from the README.

What license does Dong Blog use?

Dong Blog is released under the MIT license, so you can reuse and modify the theme for your own site. The README also notes a companion project, the Letter portfolio theme, from the same author.