The Star Formation Newsletter

Welcome to the main repository for The Star Formation Newsletter's website.

Working with the repository

Installation

Fetching the repo

Clone the repo with

git clone https://github.com/starformationnews/website.git

Installing node.js

The website is built using SvelteKit, a JavaScript framework for building websites. You don't need to know how to write JavaScript, HTML, or CSS to add a post! But you will need to install some things to get it to work.

To start, install Node Package Manager. The easiest way to do this is usually with nvm. Please read and understand the installation instructions for nvm, as the below may only work on Linux/Mac - which can install nvm with

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.3/install.sh | bash

Finally, to install and use the latest version of node.js, do

nvm install --lts node
nvm use --lts node

Installing packages

Once you've installed nvm and node.js, the npm command should be available in your terminal. Do

npm install

In the downloaded folder to install all required dependences.

Writing and developing

A few commands are useful for working on the website locally. Firstly, you can preview your local copy of the website and whatever it is you're writing/doing with

npm run dev

The local preview works dynamically (a server on your local computer runs the site); however, the final website is hosted statically, meaning that all files are compiled down to simple self-contained HTML files that live on GitHub pages. You can make sure that any changes you've made to the site won't break the build process with

npm run build

which will build the site, and

npm run preview

which previews a copy of the built site locally.

Preparing a post

Creating the post

New posts (newsletters, PhD theses, etc) live in the posts directory, and are written in markdown format. Each new post lives in its own folder; this folder is the path the post will live under on the website. A +page.md file within that folder is then the content displayed on that page.

Filling out the frontmatter

Each markdown file should contain frontmatter. These are properties of the post that live at the top of it. The best way to learn is probably to look at the frontmatter of an existing post; a working example for a newsletter is below:

title: 'Star Formation Newsletter #397'
date: 2026-02-03
authors: ['Emily Hunt']
categories: ['newsletters']
description: 'This is its 397th Star Formation Newsletter, covering new research postings in January of 2026.'
layout: newsletter  # When set, looks for an arxiv.json in this directory and includes those posts.
# hidden: true  # Set as true until you want to publish; when true, the post won't appear on the page, but can be seen on the site if you know the URL.
image: './header.webp'  # When set, can be a path to an image. By convention, call it 'header.webp' and put it in the post's directory.
imageCredit: 'ESO'  # Credit of the image
imageURL: 'https://link.com/to/the/image'  # Link to where the image was sourced from

Adding arXiv information

The website can automatically download arXiv posts for you!

1. Ensure that you have already created the folder where the newsletter will live.

2. Run npm run arxiv <year> <month> to download relevant entries from the website. This creates an arXiv.json file for that month.

3. Preview the site and check that all papers are relevant and displayed correctly.

Images

Please make sure that images are in .webp format (this saves on filesize!) and have a maximum size of 2000 pixels in any dimension. You can easily convert images on the command line with ImageMagick, using the commmand:

convert filename.jpg filename.webp

For images larger than 2000 pixels in any dimension, you can also resize them with

convert -resize 2000x2000^ filename.jpg filename.webp

Uploading your new post

Some git/GitHub steps are required here.

1. Create a new branch for your post and add all new commits to it. This makes it easier for others to check your post without messing up the real website!

   • Please name branches based on what you're adding, e.g.: newsletters-401, editorials-new-submission-process, phds-cameren-swiggum. The first word of the name should describe what category it goes in; everything else should uniquely describe the post itself.

2. Create a pull request on GitHub with your new post.

3. Ask a maintainer (e.g. Emily) to approve the pull request to publish your post.

4. The site will then build in the background automatically once your post has been merged into the main branch!

Getting help

Currently, the best people to ask for help are...

• Emily @emilyhunt, who wrote the website's source code