Nextra 3.0 is released. Read more

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
💡

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 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
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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.mjs file in your project’s root directory:

next.config.mjs
import nextra from 'nextra'
 
const withNextra = nextra({
  theme: 'nextra-theme-docs',
  themeConfig: './theme.config.jsx'
})
 
export default withNextra()
 
// If you have other Next.js configurations, you can pass them as the parameter:
// export default 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.

Create Next.js App Component

Create pages/_app.jsx file with the following content:

pages/_app.jsx
export default function App({ Component, pageProps }) {
  return <Component {...pageProps} />
}

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 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: