Bengal Wiki

Welcome to Bengal Wiki (bengal.wiki), a premium, highly aesthetic, open-source collaborative digital encyclopedia dedicated to mapping and preserving the rich history, vibrant culture, outstanding personalities, and prominent locations of the Bengal region.

The platform is designed to look like a modernized, premium version of a classical Wikipedia page, built with a high-performance, server-first architecture. It is fully responsive, full-width (no sidebars), and manages all articles as static Markdown files powered by Git.

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Key Features

• Wikipedia Aesthetic (Modernized): Clean borders, structured fact tables, light-gray layouts, and elegant serif typography (Lora headings paired with Inter body text).
• Fully Responsive & Full-Width: No left sidebars. A spacious, readable, centered layout that responsively fits mobile devices (collapsing Table of Contents, swipable tab bars, and stacked infoboxes).
• Smart SVG Graphical Placeholders: A custom inline vector generator (SvgPlaceholder.astro) that dynamically outputs rich, lightweight illustrations based on article categories (e.g., stylized portraits for people, terracotta arches for monuments, hills/tea gardens for nature, and contour locator maps for places) instead of blank gray boxes.
• Dynamic Autocomplete Search: An interactive autocomplete search bar (WikiSearch.astro) powered by a static search index compiled at build time (search.json.ts), supporting full keyboard navigation (ArrowUp, ArrowDown, Enter, Escape).
• Interactive Facts InfoBox: A floating fact card component (InfoBox.astro) that automatically maps frontmatter parameters to structured tables.
• Automatic Table of Contents: Dynamic caught-all route ([...slug].astro) parses headings and automatically inserts a collapsible "Contents [hide/show]" block in long-form articles.
• Dynamic Database Statistics: Special Special:Statistics page (statistics.astro) that dynamically tracks database sizes and lists an active directories index.
• 100% Operational Git Actions: Replaced mock logins with a Git platform bar. The classic tabs (Read, View Source, and View History) dynamically map to the active source file's location and commit logs directly on GitHub.

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Tech Stack & Utilities

1. Framework: Astro v6 (delivering zero-Javascript, static HTML by default).
2. Styling: Vanilla HSL-based CSS variables, ensuring light-weight load speeds and modular styling rules.
3. Database: Decentralized local Markdown (.md) files.
4. Validation: Strict schema validation using Zod inside the Astro content collections layer.

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Project Directory Structure

bengal.wiki/
├── public/                 # Static public assets (favicons, manifest)
├── src/
│   ├── assets/             # Component assets and images
│   ├── components/         # Modular layout components
│   │   ├── InfoBox.astro        # Right-aligned facts infobox card
│   │   ├── SvgPlaceholder.astro # Dynamic SVG theme-graphic generator
│   │   ├── WikiFooter.astro     # Wiki disclaimers & licensing footer
│   │   ├── WikiHeader.astro     # Nav tabs, SVG logo & metanav git bar
│   │   └── WikiSearch.astro     # Autocomplete client-side search box
│   ├── content/
│   │   └── pages/          # Local Markdown (.md) database corpus
│   │       ├── people/          # Biographies (Tagore, Satyajit Ray, etc.)
│   │       ├── places/          # Geography & Sites (Sundarbans, Darjeeling, etc.)
│   │       ├── songs/           # Anthems & music (Jana Gana Mana, etc.)
│   │       ├── culture.md       # Art & Culture overview article
│   │       ├── history.md       # History overview article
│   │       └── index.md         # Welcome index node
│   ├── layouts/
│   │   └── Layout.astro         # Main HTML layout, fonts, and global CSS
│   ├── pages/              # Astro routes & dynamic endpoints
│   │   ├── [...slug].astro      # Dynamic article catch-all route & TOC parser
│   │   ├── index.astro          # Wikipedia-themed Home Page dashboard
│   │   ├── people.astro         # Eminent People portal directory listings
│   │   ├── places.astro         # Prominent Places portal directory listings
│   │   ├── songs.astro          # Legendary Songs portal directory listings
│   │   ├── statistics.astro     # Special:Statistics dynamic database indexes
│   │   └── search.json.ts       # Automated compilation-ready search API index
│   ├── content.config.ts   # Astro collection schemas and Zod validators
│   └── env.d.ts
├── astro.config.mjs        # Astro configuration & Site URL domain parameters
├── package.json            # Node scripts & dependencies
└── tsconfig.json

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Document Schemas & Frontmatter

All articles inside the pages collection must declare their metadata parameters inside their Markdown frontmatter matching the schema below:

---
title: "Article Title"
description: "A short, descriptive, single-sentence summary of the subject."
image_type: "person" # Options: person, monument, nature, map, song, generic
image_caption: "Caption displayed directly beneath the vector placeholder."
facts:
  Key 1: "Value details (supports HTML <br> or links)"
  Key 2: "Value details"
categories:
  - "Primary Category Name"
  - "Secondary Category Name"
---

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Command Line Scripts

All commands are run from the project root using a terminal:

Command	Action
npm install	Installs project dependencies
npm run dev	Launches the local hot-reloading dev server at localhost:4321
npm run build	Compiles the production-ready static site inside ./dist/
npm run preview	Previews the compiled production build locally
npm run astro ...	Runs native Astro CLI commands

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Contributing

Since Bengal Wiki is completely open-source, the content is managed entirely through Git:

1. To report an issue, open a ticket on our Issue Tracker.
2. To modify or add a page, create a Markdown file matching our schema inside src/content/pages/ and submit a Pull Request.
3. To view the source code or edit details of any page, click the View Source tab at the top of the article to jump straight to the source file on GitHub.