What Is the Longform Template?
The Idea
Some content doesn’t fit neatly into a docs page or a blog post. Retrospectives, design explorations, project journals — these are pieces that benefit from a focused, immersive reading experience.
The longform template gives you that. It creates a viewport-fitted split-panel layout:
- Left: A persistent sidebar listing all articles in the series
- Right: The content itself, wide and scrollable
Think of it as a digital magazine layout — you pick an article from the index, and the content fills your screen.
How It Works
Set template: "longform" and give the page a section value. Every longform page with the same section appears together in the sidebar index.
---
template: "longform"
section: "deep-dives"
nav_order: 10
---The nav_order field controls the sort order. Lower numbers appear first.
When To Use It
Use longform when you want readers to:
- Stay focused on one piece of content at a time
- Navigate between related articles without leaving the experience
- Read something that’s more like an essay than a reference page
It’s not a replacement for docs (use guide) or marketing pages (use landing). It’s a third mode — lean back and read.
What’s Next
Check out the other articles in this section to see how serialized longform content feels in practice.