Kubrick Astro is an Astro starter kit that recreates the classic WordPress Kubrick theme, the default WordPress theme from 2004, so you can build a modern static blog or website with the same nostalgic look.
What is Kubrick Astro?
Kubrick Astro is a starter template built on the Astro static site generator. It takes Markdown and MDX content as input and produces a fully static website as output, with features like a blog index, SEO metadata, RSS feed, and sitemap. The theme was inspired by the Kubrick theme that shipped as the default theme in WordPress 1.5 and is maintained by Angelfire on GitHub.
Key Features
- Minimal styling — The starter includes only lightweight, base styling so you can customize the design without fighting a framework.
- SEO-friendly — Each page gets canonical URLs and OpenGraph data automatically, helping with sharing and search indexing.
- Sitemap support — A sitemap is generated at build time to help search engines crawl the site.
- RSS Feed support — Blog posts are syndicated through an automatically generated RSS feed.
- Markdown & MDX support — Write content in Markdown or MDX; both are compiled to HTML during the build.
- Syntax highlighting — Code blocks are styled with syntax highlighting out of the box.
- Image optimization — Astro's built-in image handling optimizes images for the web.
- Pagination — Blog post listings are paginated, so you can control how many posts appear per page.
- ViewTransition — Supports Astro's ViewTransition API for smooth page transitions.
- Custom pages — You can add pages beyond the standard blog structure, like an about or portfolio page.
Who is it for?
- Former WordPress users — Anyone who remembers the Kubrick theme can now run a similarly styled blog with the speed of a static site.
- Astro developers — Developers can use it as a starting point for a blog or content site, since RSS, sitemap, and OpenGraph are already configured.
- Content writers — Writers who prefer Markdown can start publishing immediately using the included content collection.
What can you do with Kubrick Astro?
- Personal blog — Publish Markdown or MDX posts and get pagination, RSS, and SEO tags automatically.
- Portfolio site — Use the custom pages support to add an about, portfolio, or project page alongside the blog.
- Documentation site — Combine MDX with syntax highlighting to build technical documentation.
How does Kubrick Astro work?
From the project root, run npm install to install dependencies, then npm run dev to start a local development server at localhost:4321. When you are ready to publish, npm run build outputs the static site to the ./dist directory, and npm run preview lets you test the production build locally. Additional Astro CLI commands are available via npm run astro.
FAQ
Does Kubrick Astro support RSS?
Yes. The starter includes RSS feed generation, so blog content is syndicated in a standard RSS format automatically.
What is the build output?
Running npm run build creates a static site in the ./dist directory, ready to deploy to any static hosting provider.
How do I add custom pages?
The starter includes support for custom pages, so you can add new .astro files in the project's pages directory following the same structure as the included templates.
