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Sanity Create Template Build Fails Without Error Information

10 replies
Last updated: May 23, 2020
I'm trying to set up a new site with the create templates. I've tried both the kitchen sink and the Gatsby blog but get errors every time I try to set it up. I don't get any error information; only that the build failed. See attached screenshot.
I simply filled out the forms on this page:
https://www.sanity.io/create?template=sanity-io%2Fsanity-template-gatsby-blog and it errorred. This has happened numerous times and I am unable to build any site.
Any help appreciated.
AI Update

I'm sorry to hear you're experiencing build failures with those Sanity templates! The issue you're encountering is actually due to those templates being deprecated and archived.

The Gatsby blog template repository was archived on March 6, 2023 and is no longer maintained. This is why you're seeing build failures without specific error messages - the template is outdated and likely incompatible with current versions of dependencies, Gatsby, or Sanity itself.

The same situation applies to the "kitchen sink" template you mentioned. These older templates from sanity.io/create are no longer actively supported.

Here's what you should use instead:

For modern, maintained templates, check out Sanity's current template library. Here are some excellent alternatives:

Clean Starter Templates (minimal setup):

  • Blog with Built-in Content Editing - A modern Next.js blog with Sanity Studio embedded, featuring instant previews and Visual Editing. This is the spiritual successor to the old Gatsby blog template.

These templates are actively maintained, work with the latest versions of Sanity (Sanity Studio v3), and include modern features like Visual Editing and real-time previews.

If you specifically need Gatsby:

While the official Gatsby template is archived, you can still use Sanity with Gatsby by:

  1. Starting with a clean Gatsby project
  2. Installing gatsby-source-sanity
  3. Following the Gatsby + Sanity documentation

However, I'd strongly recommend considering Next.js or one of the other modern frameworks listed above, as they have better support, more active development, and superior performance in the Sanity ecosystem. The Next.js templates in particular offer features like:

  • Visual Editing - Edit content directly in your preview
  • Live Content API - Real-time content updates without rebuilding
  • Embedded Studio - Manage content without switching apps
  • One-click deployment - Get started in minutes

The Blog with Built-in Content Editing template is essentially what the Gatsby blog template would be if it were built today with modern best practices.

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10 replies
user B
Not sure if this is helpful, but I had this problem a few days ago—I ended up finding that there was a disparity between the Netlify account and my Github I was using—to be specific, I was trying to provision a repo and deploy from my personal GitHub, and had given access to my agencies Netlify instance to handle deployment, where my Github had never been authorized.
Not sure how/why this disparity contributed to the failed deployments, but going in to make sure I was properly authorized on both Github and Netlify in my browser fixed the issue for me.
As a side note, the portfolio setup is the first one that worked—curious if you would be able to deploy that one, or not
user P
I only have 1 account each for Sanity, github, & Netlify so I cant imagine that’d be it but then again I’m an amateur dev so I may have screwed up accounts. Worth investigating.
I was logged in to all accounts on the same browser window when I tried it.

I may have tried the portfolio starter before. I don’t recall. I am 99% sure I’d gotten the blog starter to work but (for some reason I don’t recall) I’d deleted it (probably was an early experiment as I tried to figure it all out so it was deleted to restart from scratch).

But I’ll try the portfolio starter again now.
In that case, I would double check that the sanity and netlify projects, as well as the github repo from previous deployments have all been deleted—may be a naming conflict, seeing something in one place or another and thinking "oh, hey, I already exist here" and failing
I do get a naming conflict error on the repo, even though I've double checked and verified the old repo was deleted and no other repo has that name.
This time, with the portfolio starter, I just ran with the default repo name. Everything worked.

Odd but at least I have something to start working on.

Greatly appreciate your help.
Ahh, interesting. Well, that's all I've got—good luck!
Like I said, your input helped. I have something to play with now! 🙂
Hi Rich, thanks for notifying. Not sure what this error is but we will look into it. It should not be naming error, that should be detected and get a specific message in the flow.
Hi Rich, thanks for notifying. Not sure what this error is but we will look into it. It should not be naming error, that should be detected and get a specific message in the flow.
Hi again Rich, we think actually this one had to do with Gitub having some downtime, and also logs tells us that we did not manage to connect to github. Could you please try again, and let us now if it works?

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