Gatsby Blog Starter Kit

Gatsby Blog Starter Kit is a boilerplate repository that scaffolds a static blog using the Gatsby framework, bundling post previews, tag navigation, and responsive images into a clone-ready project.

What is Gatsby Blog Starter Kit?

Gatsby Blog Starter Kit is a starter kit that produces a static blog built with Gatsby, a React-based static site generator. The project takes blog posts written in Markdown as input and generates a deployable static site with a post listing page, per-tag pages, and sequential navigation between posts. It runs on the Gatsby build system and is intended to be cloned and customized rather than installed as a plugin. It is published on GitHub under the DSchau account and comes pre-wired with Travis CI for builds and Greenkeeper for automated dependency updates.

Key Features

• Blog post listing — The homepage displays a list of blog posts with previews, letting readers scan all content at a glance.
• Previous/next post navigation — Each post includes buttons to move to the previous or next post in sequence, simplifying browsing.
• Tags and tag navigation — Posts can be labeled with tags, and the starter includes tag-based browsing so readers can filter posts by topic.
• Responsive images — Images embedded in Markdown are processed by gatsby-remark-images to automatically generate responsive, optimized versions.
• CI and dependency automation — A Travis CI configuration runs builds on every commit, and Greenkeeper keeps dependencies updated automatically.

Who is it for?

• Developers starting a Gatsby blog — Clone the kit to get a working blog structure with zero configuration beyond writing posts.
• Bloggers who prefer Markdown — Write posts in Markdown and publish them without touching UI code; the starter handles layout and navigation.
• Developers learning Gatsby — Use the concise codebase as a reference for how Gatsby pages, GraphQL queries, and remark transformations fit together.

What can you do with Gatsby Blog Starter Kit?

• Personal blogs: Create a personal blogging site with tag-based organization and post navigation, then deploy it to any static host.
• Portfolio side-projects: Publish a project changelog or updates in a blog format, reusing the tag filtering for category pages.
• Learning exercises: Extend the starter by adding new Gatsby plugins or templates and use the existing GraphQL queries as a pattern to copy.

How does Gatsby Blog Starter Kit work?

The setup is minimal: clone this repository, run yarn to install dependencies, and then run yarn start to launch the Gatsby development server. The starter uses Gatsby's default data layer (GraphQL) to pull Markdown files from the filesystem and feed them to blog post templates.

Alternatives

If you want a different starting point, consider gatsby-starter-blog, the official Gatsby blog starter maintained by the Gatsby team, which is more minimal and does not include tag navigation out of the box.

FAQ

How do I install Gatsby Blog Starter Kit?

Clone the repository, then run yarn to install dependencies. After that, yarn start launches the development server. The starter requires Node.js and Yarn as prerequisites.

What features does the starter include out of the box?

It includes blog post previews on the listing page, previous and next buttons on each post, tag support with tag navigation, and responsive images via the gatsby-remark-images plugin. It also ships with Travis CI and Greenkeeper configuration.

Does Gatsby Blog Starter Kit support responsive images?

Yes. The starter integrates gatsby-remark-images, a Gatsby plugin that processes Markdown images to generate responsive, resized versions with srcset and lazy loading.