Quickstart#
Reading through all the documentation is highly recommended, but for the truly impatient, following are some quick steps to get started.
Installation#
Install Pelican (and optionally Markdown if you intend to use it) on Python
>=3.8.1 by running the following command in your preferred terminal, prefixing
with sudo if permissions warrant:
python -m pip install "pelican[markdown]"
Create a project#
First, choose a name for your project, create an appropriately-named directory for your site, and switch to that directory:
mkdir -p ~/projects/yoursite
cd ~/projects/yoursite
Create a skeleton project via the pelican-quickstart command, which begins
by asking some questions about your site:
pelican-quickstart
For questions that have default values denoted in brackets, feel free to use
the Return key to accept those default values [1]. When asked for
your URL prefix, enter your domain name as indicated (e.g.,
https://example.com).
Create an article#
You cannot run Pelican until you have created some content. Use your preferred text editor to create your first article with the following content:
Title: My First Review
Date: 2010-12-03 10:20
Category: Review
Following is a review of my favorite mechanical keyboard.
Given that this example article is in Markdown format, save it as
~/projects/yoursite/content/keyboard-review.md.
Generate your site#
From your project root directory, run the pelican command to generate your site:
pelican content
Your site has now been generated inside the output/ directory. (You may see
a warning related to feeds, but that is normal when developing locally and can
be ignored for now.)
Preview your site#
Open a new terminal session, navigate to your project root directory, and run the following command to launch Pelican’s web server:
pelican --listen
Preview your site by navigating to http://localhost:8000/ in your browser.
Continue reading the other documentation sections for more detail, and check out the Pelican wiki’s Tutorials page for links to community-published tutorials.