Blacks Review — Astro Multipurpose Portfolio and Gallery Template

Most multipurpose templates try to do everything and end up doing nothing well. They include every possible section, every possible widget, and every possible integration — and the result is a site that feels bloated and unfocused.

Blacks is a different approach. It’s a multipurpose dark template built specifically for visual content — photography, videography, art, and creative portfolios. The blog and landing page are supporting features, not the main event.

This review covers what’s inside, who it’s for, and whether it’s worth the one-time price.

What Is Blacks?

Blacks is a premium Astro multipurpose theme with a dark design. It includes:

• Portfolio with image and video galleries
• Blog with tags and categories
• Landing page with JSON-driven sections
• Contact form
• Services pages
• Promotion widgets for cross-selling
• Pagination for galleries and blog
• SEO auto-injection — meta tags, Open Graph, sitemap
• Responsive layout — works on desktop, tablet, and mobile

Demo: astro-blacks-themes.pages.dev Price: One-time purchase Buy: creativitaz.gumroad.com/l/astrojs-blacks

What Makes Blacks Different

1. Built for Visual Content

Blacks is narrower than most multipurpose templates. It’s specifically designed for:

• Photographers
• Videographers
• Visual artists
• Creative studios and agencies

The core features are image galleries, video galleries, and portfolio case studies. The blog and landing page are supporting features.

2. Image and Video Galleries

Blacks includes two types of galleries:

Image gallery — Grid of images with detail pages. Each image has its own article with title, description, and metadata.

Video gallery — Grid of YouTube videos with detail pages. Each video has its own article with a YouTube embed.

Both galleries support pagination and categories.

3. Portfolio with Case Studies

The portfolio section is designed for case studies. Each project has:

• Cover image
• Title and description
• Client and year
• Gallery (optional)
• Featured flag (for highlighting on the homepage)

This is the structure that works for design and creative portfolios.

4. Dark Theme by Design

Blacks is dark-first, not dark-optional. The design is built around a dark palette, which works well for visual content — photography, video, and art look better on dark backgrounds.

5. JSON-Driven Configuration

Every piece of content — site title, navigation, footer, social links, contact details — is stored in src/data/config.json. You edit the JSON, and the site updates.

Home page content is in src/data/home.json. Same pattern.

6. Markdown Content for Everything

Portfolio projects, blog posts, gallery images, and gallery videos are all Markdown files with frontmatter. Adding new content means creating a new .md file.

This is the same pattern used by Astro content collections — clean, structured, and easy to manage.

7. SEO Foundation

Blacks handles:

• Meta title and description per page
• Open Graph tags for social sharing
• Twitter card support
• Sitemap XML
• Canonical URLs

You don’t need to write SEO code. You just fill in the content.

Who Blacks Is For

Blacks is a good fit if you’re:

• A photographer with a portfolio and blog
• A videographer with a video gallery
• A visual artist who needs a dark-themed portfolio
• A creative studio or agency
• A freelancer who needs a portfolio plus blog

It’s probably not a good fit if you need:

• A light-themed portfolio (Blacks is dark-first)
• A booking system or e-commerce (Blacks is content-focused)
• A full CMS-first workflow (though CMS integration is possible)

For those cases, you’d need a different theme or custom development.

Installation

Installation is standard for an Astro project:

# Extract the source code
# Open the project folder in a terminal
cd path/to/blacks

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start the development server
npm run dev

The site runs at localhost:4321.

For production:

npm run build
npm run preview

The build output goes to dist/, ready to upload to any static host.

Configuration

Configuration happens in two main files:

1. src/data/config.json — site title, description, favicon, navbar, social links, contact info

2. src/data/home.json — home page content (hero, sections, features)

Example config.json:

{
  "url": "https://your-domain.com",
  "title": "Your Site Title",
  "description": "Your site description",
  "favicon": "/img/favicon.svg",
  "image": "/img/cover.jpg",
  "navbar": "Navbar Title",
  "nav_list": [
    { "nav": "Home", "link": "/" },
    { "nav": "Portfolio", "link": "/portfolio" },
    { "nav": "Blog", "link": "/blog" },
    { "nav": "Contact", "link": "/contact" }
  ],
  "social": [
    { "title": "Facebook", "link": "https://facebook.com/yourpage" },
    { "title": "Instagram", "link": "https://instagram.com/yourpage" }
  ]
}

Content Structure

Blacks organizes content into clear folders:

• src/pages/about/index.md — about page
• src/pages/blog/ — blog posts
• src/pages/gallery/image/ — image gallery
• src/pages/gallery/video/ — video gallery
• src/pages/services/ — services pages
• src/pages/portfolio/ — portfolio projects

Each content type uses Markdown files with frontmatter.

Customization

The template is built to be customized:

• Colors — edit the CSS variables in the styles folder
• Layout — swap components in src/design/
• Content — edit JSON and Markdown files
• Navigation — edit src/data/config.json

If you can write Astro, you can customize anything. If you can only edit JSON and Markdown, you can still run a functional portfolio site.

Performance

Blacks builds to static HTML. That means:

• No server runtime
• No database queries
• No JavaScript framework overhead
• Loads instantly from a CDN

Actual performance depends on your images, hosting, and third-party scripts. For a visual portfolio, image optimization matters most — Blacks includes Astro Picture optimization for responsive images.

Pricing

Blacks is available for a one-time purchase on Gumroad. No subscription. No per-site license. Use it on unlimited projects.

Buy Blacks → creativitaz.gumroad.com/l/astrojs-blacks

Alternatives

If Blacks isn’t quite right, here are other Astro themes from the same creator:

• AstroCar — Car rental booking template
• Docuna — Starlight docs + landing + blog
• Docus — Starlight docs + blog + landing
• PaperHouse — Bento portfolio + works + blog + docs
• Finance App — SaaS/finance landing page

Or if you want an all-in-one theme with landing page, Starlight docs, blog, and optional Decap CMS integration, check out ForgeDocs.

Verdict

Blacks does one thing well: it gives visual creators a dark-themed portfolio with image and video galleries, plus a blog.

It’s not a CMS. It’s not a hosted platform. It’s a static Astro project — and a well-built one for visual content.

If you’re a photographer, videographer, or visual artist who wants a dark-themed portfolio with a blog, Blacks is a solid choice.

Get Blacks on Gumroad → creativitaz.gumroad.com/l/astrojs-blacks

If you need a custom Astro site built for your brand, hire me on Fiverr →.

Blacks is built by Creativitaz. This review is independent and based on the publicly available demo and documentation.