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Pelican

Pelican is a static site generator in Python.

Quickstart

  • make a dir
  • create virtual env python3 -m venv venv
  • upgrade pip ./venv/bin/pip install --upgrade pip
  • activate env source venv/bin/activate
  • install pelican pip install pelican
  • create basic files and dir pelican-quickstart
  • start server make devserver go to http://localhost:8000/
  • It builds the output dir

Structure

  • content holds all contents,
    • articles can be created as .md .html or .rst
    • content/pages dir can have pages
    • content/downloads can serve static content for pages
    • {static}/downloads/logo.jpg copies file to output and links to path
    • Samples can be found on docs and eg site
  • output has all the static pages built using content and theme.

Adding Theme

  • Make a themes dir anywhere
  • add this dir to pelicanconf.py as THEME = 'themes_dir/my_theme
  • my_theme should have two folders
    • static all your css, js and images can go here, copied as-is to output
    • templates templates for various mandatory pages
      • base.html starting point, links href="{{ SITEURL }}/theme/css/my.css">
      • page.html imports base and adds content for pages
      • index.html lists all blog articles
      • other pages are mandatory like article, author, tag etc can be copied from here.

Dev Sprints

  • Go to folder
  • activate env source venv/bin/activate
  • start server make devserver go to http://localhost:8000/
  • this will launch the site and will autoupdate site on page modifications.

Production Push

  • Delete the output dir
  • run make devserver go to http://localhost:8000/ verify all changes
  • then make an archive of output folder and upload to your host.
  • for GCP please follow steps here.

Tips and Tricks

  • to replace blog index page, add following metas to any new homepage.html
  <meta name="save_as" content="index.html" />
  <meta name="url" content="index.html" />
  • sorting menu items
    • in pelicanconf.py add PAGE_ORDER_BY = 'reversed-date'
    • then in pages meta add <meta name="date" content="2020-07-26 07:00" />
    • you can then change time to sort pages in menu bar.

Minimum html required for pages:

<html>
    <head>
        <title>My super title</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        This is the content of my super blog post.
    </body>
</html>

To do:

  • exclude some pages from menu
  • add articles
2025-01-12 Aug 2020