Build & Deploy

The blog-site example uses the same build pipeline as all Pagesmith examples: the pagesmithSsg Vite plugin handles static site generation and Pagefind indexing.

Build process

Running npm run build in examples/blog-site/ triggers the following sequence:

1. Vite build — Bundles client.js into hashed CSS and JS assets
2. SSG plugin — Calls getRoutes() to discover all URLs, then render() for each in parallel
3. HTML output — Writes static HTML files to gh-pages/examples/blog-site/
4. Pagefind — Indexes the generated HTML to produce a client-side search index

Each render() invocation reloads collections in this example (loadSite → createContentLayer → entry.render()), which keeps the implementation obvious for readers; production sites often cache the layer between routes if profiling shows it matters.

The SSR entry contract

The pagesmithSsg plugin expects the entry file to export two functions:

1export async function getRoutes(config: SsgRenderConfig): Promise<string[]>;2export async function render(url: string, config: SsgRenderConfig): Promise<string>;

getRoutes(config) returns every URL the site should generate. The config object provides base, root, and other build-time information.

render(url, config) receives a URL and config, then returns a complete HTML document string. The config includes cssPath, jsPath, and searchEnabled for asset references.

Development

1cd examples/blog-site2npm run dev

From the monorepo root you can instead run vp run dev:eg:blog-site, which starts the same dev server for this package.

In development mode, the SSG plugin provides middleware that calls render() on each request. Content changes trigger automatic re-rendering.

Production build

1cd examples/blog-site2npm run build

The output directory is configured in vite.config.ts:

1build: {2  outDir: '../../gh-pages/examples/blog-site',3  emptyOutDir: true,4}

Deployment

The built site is a directory of static files that can be deployed to any static hosting service. The base path in the Vite config determines the URL prefix for all assets and links.

For GitHub Pages, the site is deployed under /pagesmith/examples/blog-site/.

Search

Search is powered by Pagefind, which runs at build time to index the generated HTML. During development, search is unavailable since Pagefind needs a completed build. The searchEnabled flag in the render config controls whether search UI elements are included.