Blog

The LongTerMemory blog is a static content marketing site built with Astro v5. It serves content about spaced repetition, learning science, AI-powered education, and memory techniques.

It is deployed at longtermemory.com/b/ as a subdirectory of the main domain.

Tech Stack

Tool	Purpose
Astro v5	Static site generation
Tailwind CSS v3	Utility-first styling (purple/gradient theme)
Content Collections + Zod	Type-safe content with schema validation
Fuse.js	Client-side full-text search
Shiki	Syntax highlighting (GitHub Dark theme)

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Development Commands

cd blog

npm install          # Install dependencies
npm run dev         # Dev server → http://localhost:4321/b/
npm run build       # Production build → dist/
npm run preview     # Preview production build locally

Note: No test suite is configured for this project.

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Configuration

Key settings in astro.config.mjs:

• Site URL: https://longtermemory.com

• Base path: /b — all routes and internal links are prefixed with /b

• Syntax highlighting: GitHub Dark via Shiki

• Prefetch: enabled for faster navigation

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Routing

File-based routing under src/pages/:

Route	File	Purpose
/b/	index.astro	Homepage (featured + all posts)
/b/{slug}/	[...slug].astro	Individual blog post
/b/categories/	categories/index.astro	All categories
/b/categories/{category}/	categories/[category].astro	Posts by category
/b/about/	about.astro	About page
/b/rss.xml	rss.xml.js	RSS feed
/b/sitemap-index.xml	(auto-generated)	Sitemap — build only

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Content Management

Content is managed via Astro Content Collections with strict Zod schemas defined in src/content.config.ts.

Adding a Blog Post

1. Create src/content/blog/your-slug.md

2. Add required frontmatter:

---
title: "Your Post Title"           # max 100 chars
description: "Post description"    # max 160 chars
pubDate: 2026-01-15
author: "Author Name"
authorSlug: "author-slug"          # must match a file in src/content/authors/
category: "Spaced Repetition"
tags: ["memory", "studying", "ai"]
# Optional fields:
updatedDate: 2026-02-01
featured: false
draft: false
---

1. Write content in Markdown below the frontmatter

2. The filename (without .md) becomes the URL slug automatically

Draft and scheduled posts: Posts with draft: true are never published. Posts with a future pubDate are excluded from the build until the server rebuilds on or after that date.

Adding an Author

1. Create src/content/authors/author-slug.json:

{
  "name": "Author Name",
  "slug": "author-slug",
  "bio": "Short author bio.",
  "avatar": "/images/authors/author-slug.jpg",
  "role": "Content Writer",
  "twitter": "https://twitter.com/...",
  "linkedin": "https://linkedin.com/in/..."
}

1. Reference the author in posts via authorSlug: "author-slug"

Author bios and social links are displayed inline at the bottom of each blog post. There are no dedicated author pages.

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Import Aliases

import BlogCard from '@components/BlogCard.astro';
import Layout from '@layouts/BaseLayout.astro';
import { formatDate } from '@utils';         // bare import
import type { Post } from '@types';          // bare import

Alias	Resolves to
@components	src/components/
@layouts	src/layouts/
@utils	src/utils/index.ts
@types	src/types/index.ts
@content	src/content/
@styles	src/styles/

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Components

All components are in src/components/ using .astro format:

Component	Purpose
SEO.astro	Meta tags, Open Graph, Twitter Card, structured data
Header.astro	Navigation with search trigger (Cmd/Ctrl + K)
Footer.astro	Site footer
BlogCard.astro	Post preview card
SearchModal.astro	Full-text search via Fuse.js
TableOfContents.astro	Auto-generated from H2–H4 headings
SocialShare.astro	Share buttons (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, Email)
AuthorCard.astro	Author bio with social links
Newsletter.astro	Email subscription form

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SEO

The blog has comprehensive SEO built in:

• Sitemap: auto-generated at build time (sitemap-index.xml + sitemap-0.xml)

  • Priorities: Homepage (1.0) > Posts (0.9) > Categories index (0.7) > Category pages (0.6) > Static pages (0.5)

• Structured data: BlogPosting schema on post pages, BreadcrumbList on all pages, Organization schema in SEO.astro

• Meta tags: Open Graph, Twitter Card, canonical URL, language/geo, author, category

• RSS feed: auto-generated at /b/rss.xml

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Utility Functions (src/utils/index.ts)

Function	Description
calculateReadingTime(content)	Word-count based (200 WPM)
extractTableOfContents(content)	Parses H2–H4 headings
getRelatedPosts(posts, currentPost, limit)	Tag-based similarity
generateBlogPostStructuredData(post, authorName, siteUrl)	JSON-LD
generateShareUrls(url, title)	Social sharing URLs

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Deployment

Build and Deploy

# Copy environment template
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with deployment credentials (DEPLOY_USER, DEPLOY_HOST, DEPLOY_BLOG_PATH)

# Deploy (commits changes, SSHes into server, builds remotely)
./deploy.sh

The deploy script:

1. Commits and pushes local changes to git

2. SSHes into the server, pulls the latest code

3. Runs npm install and npm run build

4. The dist/ directory is served directly from the configured server path

Scheduled Publishing

Since the build happens server-side, a daily cron job can trigger a rebuild to publish date-scheduled posts automatically — no code changes required. Posts whose pubDate is today will appear in the next build.

A dedicated cron-build.sh script (on the server) handles this:

• Sources nvm so npm is available in the cron environment

• Skips the build if no post is scheduled for today

• Logs output to a rotating log file

Example crontab entry (on the server):

MAILTO=[e-mail]
# Rebuild blog daily at 14:00 UTC
0 14 * * * /path/to/cron-build.sh