Travis's SvelteKit template

I'm moving my existing StaticSiteTemplate project over to SvelteKit, a cool framework capable of building static sites. Even though SvelteKit offers a lot of additional functionality beyond my original Gulp-powered template, this template produces a faster dev experience and fewer dependencies.

This is for my own use and I don't have any plans to elevate it beyond my own needs, but you're welcome to take it and build on it from there. (Unless you prefer indenting with spaces, in which case GTFO.)

🆕 Create a website with this template now

How it differs from the basic SvelteKit starter project

I've preconfigured this template to be more amenable to the style of development that I prefer.

• It's set up to only output static files and not depend on any particular server.
• It assumes TypeScript everywhere.
• It enables ESLint and automatic code formatting.
• It enables SCSS.
• It enables Markdown (using MDsveX, which lets you mix Markdown and Svelte in the same file).
• It includes opinionated global styles to get beautiful text by default.
• It includes HTML minification.
• If you publish to Azure Static Web Apps, it:
  • Requires only a single configuration setting (setting the correct output folder).
  • Includes a starter staticwebapp.config.json file to configure basic settings.
  • Marks CSS and JS files as immutable for maximum caching performance.
• It includes a GitHub Actions publishing workflow to deploy to an Azure Blob Storage static website that:
  • Optionally purges an Azure CDN.
  • Optionally allows you to generate redirect pages using meta http-equiv.
  • Marks CSS and JS files as immutable for maximum caching performance.

Environment setup

Required software

Download and install the latest stable versions of these products from their websites.

1. Visual Studio Code
2. Node

Building and running

Whenever picking up a new version of the template, you need to make sure your dependencies are installed. In Visual Studio Code:

1. Terminal > Run Task
2. Install dependencies

Then, you can do a full production build of the project with:

1. Terminal > Run Build Task (Ctrl+Shift+B)

But, the most useful option will be the Start task, which starts the SvelteKit dev server, which starts instantly, watches for changes, and all sorts of cool stuff that I can't take credit for.

1. Terminal > Run Task
2. Start

To see the status of the server or build task, click the tools icon in the status bar, or Terminal > Show Running Tasks.

Debugging

To debug browser code in Visual Studio Code:

1. Start the server (see above)
2. Run > Start Debugging (F5)

Without Visual Studio Code

If you want to use the project without Visual Studio Code, use the following scripts instead of the above:

• npm install: Install dependencies
• npm start: Start dev server
• npm run build: Production build
• npm run serve: Serve production build for testing

Serving over the network

By default, the site will only be served to your local machine on port 80. If you want to expose the server to your whole local network, add --host to the commands in package.json.

Important: See this Vite.js issue for an overview of security concerns before doing this.

Customizing for your site

At minimum, do this to customize the site for your purposes:

1. Find and replace SvelteKitTemplate with the name of your site
2. Update the copyright information in src/routes/__layout.svelte
3. Replace image assets in static/images/app with appropriate logos for your site
4. Add appropriate information to the app manifest
5. Give yourself credit in humans.txt
6. Depending on your deployment needs:
   • Azure Static Web Apps: You can delete .github/workflows/publish.yml since Azure Static Web Apps will automatically add a publishing workflow for you.
   • Azure Blob Storage: If you don't need to create redirect pages, you can delete staticwebapp.config.json and remove the Create redirects task from the deployment workflow.
   • Other static hosts: You can delete .github/workflows/publish.yml since it won't work. Or, use it as a starting point and remove the Azure-specific actions.

Creating routes and redirects

Use staticwebapp.config.json to configure routes and redirects for the app. The workflow will generate the appropriate redirect page files.

Depending on how you deploy: * Azure Static Web Apps: You can use the full capabilities of this file, such as adding custom headers, URL rewrites, and so on. * Azure Blob Storage: Everything other than the routes array in this file will be ignored. * Other static hosts: This functionality will only work if you use the create-redirects GitHub Action. Everything other than the routes array in this file will be ignored.

Example staticwebapp.config.json

{
    "routes": [
        { "route": "default.aspx", "redirect": "/" }
    ]
}

Deploying to the web

You have a few options:

Deploying to Azure Static Web Apps

You can deploy to Azure Static Web Apps with very minimal configuration:

• When creating the app in Azure Portal, choose the "Custom" build preset, and set the output location to build.

Once your repo and Azure are set up in this way, whenever your default branch is changed, GitHub will automatically build your site and publish it to Azure without any manual steps.

Tip: You can test your Azure Static Web App locally:

1. Install the Azure Static Web Apps CLI (npm install -g @azure/static-web-apps-cli)
2. npm run build
3. swa start build --port 80

Deploying to Azure Blob Storage

You can easily deploy to an Azure Blob Storage static website using GitHub Actions (if your project is on GitHub):

• Generate a SAS URL for your storage account and create a Secret in your repo.
• In GitHub, open this repo's .github/workflows/publish.yml, edit it, and uncomment the two push: and branches: [ $default-branch ] lines at the top to enable automatic deployments.
  • If you prefer, you can manually trigger a deployment from the Actions tab.
  • By default, GitHub won't allow you to edit that file from Visual Studio Code, only from github.com.

Once your repo is set up this way, whenever your default branch is changed, GitHub will automatically build your site and publish it to Azure without any manual steps.

Tip: You can use my deploy-to-azure-storage Action to automatically deploy static sites built with other templates, too.

Deploying to any static file host

You can also deploy the site to any static file host. Just run a production build (npm run build; see above) and upload the contents of the build folder to a host of your choice.

Optionally purging an Azure CDN

The deployment workflow included with this template can also automatically purge an associated Azure CDN endpoint whenever the site's contents change, to minimize the length of time when files are stale. Open .github/workflows/publish.yml on github.com, and see the instructions near ENABLE_CDN_PURGE. Note that CDN purging requires a separate secret in addition to the DEPLOY_SAS_URL secret you already set up.

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This template is © 2020-2023 Travis Spomer but released to the public domain under the CC0 1.0 license. This license does not apply to sites built with this template, nor to external libraries referenced by this template; only the template itself. It is provided as-is and no warranties are made as to its functionality or suitability.