Add authors to your site

cairn has no authors feature to turn on. An author is a concept like any other: a directory of markdown files with a schema, referenced from wherever a post needs one. The showcase’s posts concept already reaches for an author by pointing its author field at the pages concept, a shortcut that works but reads oddly once a site has more than one or two authors, as Define an adapter and schema says outright. This guide builds the dedicated version: an authors concept of its own, referenced from posts the same way, rendered as a byline. The same pattern answers most “does cairn support X?” questions: the thing you want is usually a concept and a reference to it.

Declare the concept

An author needs nothing a post doesn’t already have: a directory, and a schema built from fieldset. Every concept identifies its entries through a title field, the way posts and pages do, and an author is no exception. Its editor-facing label reads “Name” rather than “Title,” but the field is still title.

import { defineConcept, fieldset, fields } from '@glw907/cairn-cms';

const authors = defineConcept({
  dir: 'src/content/authors',
  label: 'Authors',
  routing: 'embedded',
  fields: fieldset({
    title: fields.text({ label: 'Name', required: true }),
    photo: fields.image({ label: 'Photo' }),
  }),
});

routing: 'embedded' is the third shorthand Define an adapter and schema already lists: a concept that isn’t routable or dated, stays out of feeds, and that nothing links to directly, because another concept pulls its content in. An author’s bio goes in the body of the markdown file, the same as a post’s body. Add authors to your adapter’s content map the way you already added posts and pages.

Reference it

A posts entry points at one author the same way it already points at one page: a reference field naming the target concept.

import { fields } from '@glw907/cairn-cms';

const author = fields.reference({ concept: 'authors', label: 'Author' });

Add that key to the posts fieldset in place of a field that pointed at pages, and an editor’s author picker now offers every entry under authors instead of every page on the site. Everything else about a reference field, the picker widget, what a rename or a delete does to it, how a build catches a dangling edge, Link content with references already covers in full. Nothing about referencing an authors concept is special.

Render it

Marking authors embedded keeps it off the sitemap and out of feeds, but it still needs a place in your site’s own indexes, the same way posts and pages do, or there’s nothing for a reference to resolve against:

const authorsRaw = import.meta.glob('/src/content/authors/*.md', {
  query: '?raw',
  import: 'default',
  eager: true,
}) as Record<string, string>;

Add that glob to the createSiteIndexes call beside the other two, keyed authors. Embedded keeps the concept out of the site’s URLs, but your own code can still resolve it. Query a reference at render time resolves whatever concept the site knows about, routable or not, so a post’s author field resolves exactly the way the showcase’s already does against pages.

What that resolution gives back, a title, a permalink, and an optional summary, is enough for a byline, with the title holding the author’s name. The summary, when the entry has one, is the excerpt cairn already derives from its own markdown body, which is why the bio belongs in the body and not a field. A permalink resolves too, computed the same way every concept’s is, but embedded means nothing serves it, so the byline below leaves it alone.

<script lang="ts">
  import type { ResolvedReference } from '@glw907/cairn-cms/delivery';

  let { author }: { author?: ResolvedReference } = $props();
</script>

{#if author}
  <p class="byline">
    By {author.title}
    {#if author.summary}<span class="byline-bio">{author.summary}</span>{/if}
  </p>
{/if}

The pattern generalized

The same shape covers other content that has no page of its own. A projects concept referenced from a portfolio page works the way authors does here, and so do events referenced from a schedule or testimonials referenced from a pricing page (one reference, or a many-edge where a page needs several). Each is a directory, a fieldset, and a fields.reference pointing at it.