How to get started with Nikola

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Original site

It's been about 6 months since I've made my career change from teacher to software developer. Time to start a blog to document the things I've learned on and off the job.

To keep it simple, I've picked Nikola to set up this blog. It's a static site generator, ready to roll in a couple of minutes.

The Basics

I've initially built my site on macOS, so here's the basic requirements.

  1. Install Homebrew.
  2. Install Python and pip with brew install python3
  3. Install virtualenv with sudo pip3 install virtualenv

Then follow these instructions.

$ virtualenv3 ~./virtualenvs/nikola
$ source ~/.virtualenvs/nikola/bin/activate
$ pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
$ pip install --upgrade "Nikola[extras]"

Initializing a site

Simply run nikola init <directory_name>, then tell the wizard what you need.

Build the site

Type nikola build, then nikola serve to check the site locally.

Create a first post

Type nikola new_post -e, and have at it. If you're unfamiliar with reStructuredText, you can also configure Nikola to use Markdown instead.

Rebuild the site

Once more, type nikola build, followed by nikola serve --browser, or nikola auto --browser to start the development server.