Getting started

Thanks for choosing Polaris. This guide takes you from the downloaded zip to your own site running on your computer. You don’t need to be a developer: pages, trips, stays and destinations are plain text files.

Polaris is the theme edition. Visitors send you an enquiry and you reply. There are no payments and no online booking in this download. Online booking, payments and an admin area are a separate edition that is not included.

Requirements

• Node.js 22.12 or newer. Check your version by typing node -v in a terminal. If you need to install or update it, download the LTS version from nodejs.org.
• A code editor. VS Code is free and offers to install the Astro extension, which highlights mistakes as you type.

Install

1. Unzip the download and move the polaris-astro folder wherever you keep your projects.
2. Open a terminal in that folder (in VS Code: Terminal → New Terminal) and install everything Polaris needs:

npm install

Preview your site

npm run dev

Open http://localhost:4321 in your browser. Keep it open while you edit: the page updates every time you save a file.

The demo photos can’t be included in the download. The first time you run it, Polaris draws placeholder images with the same file names, so every page works from the start. See Colours, fonts and photos to add your own.

The demo uses a fictional company. Replace its name, trips, stays and people with your own.

Make it yours

1. Your business. Open src/site.config.ts and change the name, tagline, currency, contact details, menus and footer. See Site settings.
2. Your enquiries. Choose how requests reach you: WhatsApp, email, Web3Forms or Formspree. See Enquiries.
3. Your places. Edit the destinations in src/content/destinations/. See Destinations.
4. Your trips and stays. Edit the files in src/content/trips/ and src/content/stays/. See Trips and Stays.
5. Your pages. Each page is a list of blocks. Copy any block from the block library into a page. See Pages and blocks.
6. Your people and stories. Add guides, journal posts and guest reviews. See Journal, team and reviews.
7. Your legal pages. Adapt privacy.md, terms.md and cancellation.md in src/content/pages/ to your business and country. They are templates, not legal advice.
8. Your demo bar. Set demo.enabled: false in src/site.config.ts. See Site settings.
9. Your domain. Set site in astro.config.mjs and url in src/site.config.ts to your address, for example https://yourtours.com.

Publish

npm run build

This creates a dist folder containing your finished website and its search index. Deploying shows how to put it online.

Commands

Command	What it does
npm install	Installs what Polaris needs. Run it once, and again after updating.
npm run dev	Starts the live preview at localhost:4321. Search does not work here.
npm run build	Builds the finished site into dist/, then builds the search index.
npm run preview	Serves the built site so you can check it, including search, before publishing.
npm run check	Checks your content and code for mistakes.
npm run palette	Regenerates the colour scales from scripts/palette.mjs.