Astro Weekly #49

Happy Sunday, Astronauts!

I hope this newsletter finds you well—quite literally! I’m relying on automation tools as I’ll be on vacation in Lake Como when this reaches your inboxes.

Ciao to any fellow Astronauts in Italy! 🇮🇹

It’s been a whirlwind week for Astro, and there’s a lot to cover. So let’s dive right in!

What’s new with Astro 🗞️

Astro 5.0 beta released 🎉

Astro 5.0 beta has officially landed, introducing powerful new features for content management in Astro projects, plus exciting options to seamlessly combine static and personalized content on your site.

Key highlights of Astro 5.0 include:

• Content Layer API: A type-safe API to manage content across sources.

• Server Islands: Speed up page loads by deferring dynamic content.

• Merged Static & Hybrid Modes: Effortlessly combine static and dynamic content.

• Type-Safe Environment Variables: Simplified and secure variable management.

For a full breakdown of all these features and more, check out the official Astro 5.0 beta release post.

Ready to upgrade? Refer to the v5.0 beta documentation's Upgrade Guide for comprehensive details and specific upgrade instructions.

To start a new project using the 5.0 beta, run the create astro command for your package manager:

npm create astro@latest -- --ref next

Content Layer: A Deep Dive 🤿

Astro 5.0 introduces the Astro Content Layer, revolutionizing content management in your Astro projects. This flexible and extensible system offers a unified, type-safe API that simplifies the interaction with your content, regardless of its source.

With powerful loaders at your disposal, you can easily define and access your content, streamlining your development process and enhancing your project's capabilities.

Astro core maintainer Matt Kane has published Content Layer API: Deep Dive, a comprehensive guide on how the Content Layer API works and how you can use it to build your projects.

Astro Content Layer API launch partners 🤝

As part of the Astro 5.0 beta launch, Astro also announced several launch partners for the Astro Content Layer API:

• Astro x Storyblok: Content Loader

• Astro x Cloudinary: Content Loader

• Astro x Hygraph: Content Loader

• Community Loaders for Astro Content Layer
  (includes Stripe, Notion, Strapi, Airtable + more!)

Astro Boosters 🚀

LaunchFast Starter Kits helps you focus on your business with pre-built functionality and features, like:

• Postgres and Redis support

• Blogs with in-built Search and code syntax highlighting

• Sign In & Sign Up Flow with Socials and Credentials Login

• Forgot Password and Email Verification Flow

• Checkout Sessions and Webhook Processing for Stripe & Lemon Squeezy

• Landing and Waitlist pages

Available in Astro, Next.js, and SvelteKit, each kit is customizable and extendable. LaunchFast also includes integrations for analytics, storage, email, and more, saving you over 50+ hours of work on every new project.

Astro Community 🧑‍🚀

Astro 5.0 beta with Ben Holmes 5️⃣

Dive into the Astro 5.0 beta with Astro core maintainer, Ben Holmes.

Ben joined Jason Lengstorf on a live stream for a guided tour of the Content Layer API, Server Islands, type-safe env variables, and more in the Astro 5.0 beta.

Lightning-fast build times with headless WordPress ⚡️

Andrew Kepson highlights how Astro's new Content Layer API significantly reduces build times for Astro projects using headless WordPress.

The article includes a step-by-step guide on setting up and utilizing the API to fetch external data from WordPress into Astro content collections using WPGraphQL.

What else I’ve been reading this week 🤓

Check out these great posts from the Astro Community ↓

• 🤘 Astro’s Hybrid Theory

• 🚩 Using the LaunchDarkly CLI Local Development Server: Testing Client-Side and Server-Side Flags in an Astro Application

• 👕 Built with Astro, Crystallize, and Stripe (Nerd Streetwear Online Store)

If you have something awesome you’d like to share with the Astro community, you can reach me at [email protected] or via DM on X

Astro Poll 🗳️

Astro on X 💫

What’s happening on Twitter X this week…

Direct link for web version:
https://x.com/kylegawley/status/1836964473971822994

Astro Showcase 🤩

Check out these impressive projects built with Astro!

Would you like your work to be featured in our Astro Showcase? Get in touch at [email protected] or DM me on X

And that’s a wrap for this week! Time for me to catch a flight. ✈️

As always, if you’d like to be featured in next week’s newsletter, you can reach me at [email protected] or via DM on X.

See you next week for our 50th issue! Who knows what Astro has in store?

– Nathan 🧑‍🚀