Tropical
Static site generator built with React and Vite that prerenders pages to HTML, with opt-in browser JavaScript through islands.
Tropical is a static site generator that ships as a GitHub template repository. A new site starts as a copy of the template, and its pages are MDX or JSX files in src/pages. The build renders them to HTML with React, using Vite for the build.
Components render to HTML with no browser JavaScript by default. Interactive parts are added as islands with the tropical-islands package: a component wrapped in Island is hydrated in the browser through src/entry-client.jsx. A site can also attach plain JavaScript or another library to the server-rendered HTML instead.
Worth knowing
The template has no package version to upgrade in place. Each release publishes guides for updating dependencies and conventions, so a site keeps its own copy of the code and applies those changes itself.
Identity
- Status
- Stub
- Maintainer
- Ben Smithett4
- Maintained by
- Individual
- First release
- 20207
Rendering and deploy
- Runs as
- Static files2
- Rendering
- Static output2
- Install with
- GitHub template repository, then install dependencies with yarn or npm2
Releases
Adoption
Sources
- 2026-10-23: links, Categories, Built on
tropical.js.org/ - 2026-10-23: links, Install with, Rendering, Runs as
tropical.js.org/docs/ - 2026-10-23: links, Written in, License, GitHub stars
api.github.com/repos/bensmithett/tropical - 2026-10-23: Maintainer, License model
github.com/bensmithett/tropical/blob/main/LICENSE - 2026-10-23: Runtime, Minimum runtime
github.com/bensmithett/tropical/blob/v11.4.2/package.json - 2026-10-23: Templating, Content storage
tropical.js.org/docs/pages - 2026-10-23: First release, Current major version, Last release
api.github.com/repos/bensmithett/tropical/releases - 2026-10-23: Contributors
api.github.com/repos/bensmithett/tropical/contributors