Courses with Slides

Slide presentations can live inside any docs-layout collection. A "Slides" section appears in the sidebar alongside other content, and clicking a deck opens the full-screen viewer.

The cascade pattern

Create a subdirectory for slides inside a docs or courses collection. Set cascade: {layout: presentation} in the section's _index.md:

content/
  courses/
    getting-started/
      _index.md
      intro.md
      setup.md
    slides/
      _index.md           ← cascade: {layout: presentation}
      lecture-1.md
      lecture-2.md

content/courses/slides/_index.md:

---
title: Slides
sidebar:
  order: 30
  icon: presentation
cascade:
  layout: presentation
---

Every page in the slides/ section renders as a full-screen presentation. The section's own _index.md keeps the docs layout (cascade does not apply to the section's own index page).

How it appears in the sidebar

The sidebar shows the "Slides" group with its children:

Getting Started
  Introduction
  Setup
Slides                ← section group
  Lecture 1           ← opens as full-screen slides
  Lecture 2           ← opens as full-screen slides

Clicking a lecture page navigates to the presentation. The close button (or Escape) navigates back to the section's index page.

Sidebar ordering and icons

Control where the Slides section appears with sidebar.order. Add an icon with sidebar.icon:

---
title: Slides
sidebar:
  order: 30
  icon: presentation
  badge:
    text: New
    variant: tip
cascade:
  layout: presentation
---

Writing deck pages in a course

Deck pages inside a course collection use the same frontmatter as any other page:

---
title: "Lecture 3: Data Structures"
sidebar:
  order: 3
tags: [data-structures]
---
# Data Structures
Overview of arrays, lists, and trees
---
## Arrays
Fixed-size, contiguous memory...

The sidebar.order controls the deck's position within the Slides group. Tags and other taxonomy fields work normally.

Mixing slides and docs in one collection

Not every page in the slides section needs the presentation layout. Override the cascade on individual pages:

---
title: "Lab Worksheet"
layout: default
sidebar:
  order: 5
---

This page renders as a normal docs page despite being inside the slides section. The cascade sets layout: presentation as the default; explicit frontmatter overrides it.

Multiple slide sections

A single collection can have several slide sections:

content/
  courses/
    module-1/
      _index.md
      content.md
    module-1-slides/
      _index.md           ← cascade: {layout: presentation}
      overview.md
      deep-dive.md
    module-2/
      _index.md
      content.md
    module-2-slides/
      _index.md           ← cascade: {layout: presentation}
      overview.md

Each slide section appears as its own group in the sidebar.

Standalone slides collection vs embedded slides