Dahlia
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Overview

Learn what Dahlia provides and how the documentation theme is organized.

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Dahlia is an installable documentation theme for Astro v7, Tailwind CSS v4, and MDX. It provides the page shell, docs route, navigation model, theme tokens, and shared MDX components needed to start a project documentation site without rebuilding the chrome from scratch.

What Dahlia includes

Docs shell

Render a full-height left navigation rail, right-side article layout with TOC, page metadata, mobile docs menu, and footer from theme configuration.

Routing

Generate docs pages, Markdown source routes, search indexes, localized URLs, and route-prefixed docs from Astro content collection entries.

Search

Use the built-in client-side search dialog and generated JSON index, or replace the search UI with a component override.

Design tokens

Configure accent colors, gray scales, radius, color mode, fonts, and lower level CSS tokens for deeper styling control.

Dahlia layout

Use Dahlia’s left navigation, centered article column, sticky table of contents, splash pages, and standalone text pages.

Overrides

Replace shell slots such as search, navbar, page header, page actions, contributors, and previous or next navigation when configuration is not enough.

How the docs tree works

Dahlia reads MDX entries from the docs content collection, then injects page, Markdown source, and search routes under docsBase. With the default docsBase: '/', Dahlia generates:

  • / and nested docs pages
  • /*.md Markdown source routes
  • /search.json search index data

The docsNav config decides which sidebar and subnav section owns each page. For locale directories, route prefixes, and fallback behavior, see Internationalization. For loader base, docsBase, and slug behavior, see Content Routing.

First steps

  1. Install the theme.

    Add Dahlia, then register the integration in astro.config.ts. Install @prosefly/astro-components directly when your own content imports shared MDX components.

    Install Dahlia

  2. Configure routes and locales.

    Decide where docs are mounted and how localized content directories map to public URLs.

    Review content routing

  3. Build the docs shell.

    Set project identity, appearance, site nav links, docs navigation, footer links, page actions, and search behavior.

    Configure the project

  4. Write content.

    Add frontmatter, Markdown, images, code blocks, and shared MDX components to replace the demo pages with project documentation.

    Review authoring essentials

  5. Customize when configuration is not enough.

    Use CSS tokens for visual changes and component overrides for shell markup or behavior changes.

    Customize Dahlia

Last updated Aug 24, 2026

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