PELICAN(1) PELICAN PELICAN(1)
NAME
pelican - pelican documentation
Pelican is a static site generator, written in Python . Highlights include:
o Write your content directly with your editor of choice in
reStructuredText or
Markdown formats
o Includes a simple CLI tool to (re)generate your site
o Easy to interface with distributed version control systems and web
hooks
o Completely static output is easy to host anywhere
Ready to get started? Check out the Quickstart <> guide.
FEATURES
Pelican's feature highlights include:
o Articles (e.g., blog posts) and pages (e.g., "About", "Projects",
"Contact")
o Integration with external services
o Site themes (created using Jinja2 templates)
o Publication of articles in multiple languages
o Generation of Atom and RSS feeds
o Code syntax highlighting
o Import existing content from WordPress, Dotclear, or RSS feeds
o Fast rebuild times thanks to content caching and selective output
writing
o Extensible via a rich plugin ecosystem: Pelican Plugins
WHY THE NAME PELICAN ?
"Pelican" is an anagram for calepin, which means "notebook" in French.
;)
SOURCE CODE
You can access the source code at:
HOW TO GET HELP, CONTRIBUTE, OR PROVIDE FEEDBACK
See our feedback and contribution submission guidelines <>.
DOCUMENTATION
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 >=3.9 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 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.
Footnotes
[1] You can help localize default fields by installing the optional
tzlocal module.
Installing Pelican
Pelican currently runs best on >=3.9; earlier versions of Python are
not supported.
You can install Pelican via several different methods. The simplest is
via Pip :
python -m pip install pelican
Or, if you plan on using Markdown:
python -m pip install "pelican[markdown]"
(Keep in mind that some operating systems will require you to prefix
the above command with sudo in order to install Pelican system-wide.)
While the above is the simplest method, the recommended approach is to
create a virtual environment for Pelican via virtualenv before installing Pelican. Assuming you
have virtualenv installed, you
can then open a new terminal session and create a new virtual
environment for Pelican:
virtualenv ~/virtualenvs/pelican
cd ~/virtualenvs/pelican
source bin/activate
Once the virtual environment has been created and activated, Pelican
can be installed via python -m pip install pelican as noted above.
Alternatively, if you have the project source, you can install Pelican
using the distutils method:
cd path-to-Pelican-source
python setup.py install
If you have Git installed and prefer to install the latest
bleeding-edge version of Pelican rather than a stable release, use the
following command:
python -m pip install -e "git+https://github.com/getpelican/pelican.git#egg=pelican"
Once Pelican is installed, you can run pelican --help to see basic
usage options. For more detail, refer to the Publish <> section.
Optional packages
If you plan on using Markdown as a
markup format, you can install Pelican with Markdown support:
python -m pip install "pelican[markdown]"
Typographical enhancements can be enabled in your settings file, but
first the requisite Typogrify
library must be installed:
python -m pip install typogrify
Dependencies
When Pelican is installed, the following dependent Python packages
should be automatically installed without any action on your part:
o feedgenerator , to generate
the Atom feeds
o jinja2 , for templating support
o pygments , for syntax
highlighting
o docutils , for supporting
reStructuredText as an input format
o blinker , an object-to-object and
broadcast signaling system
o unidecode , for ASCII
transliterations of Unicode text utilities
o MarkupSafe , for a markup-safe
string implementation
o python-dateutil , to read
the date metadata
Upgrading
If you installed a stable Pelican release via Pip and wish to upgrade to the latest stable release, you can do so
by adding --upgrade:
python -m pip install --upgrade pelican
If you installed Pelican via distutils or the bleeding-edge method,
simply perform the same step to install the most recent version.
Kickstart your site
Once Pelican has been installed, you can create a skeleton project via
the pelican-quickstart command, which begins by asking some questions
about your site:
pelican-quickstart
If run inside an activated virtual environment, pelican-quickstart will
look for an associated project path inside $VIRTUAL_ENV/.project. If
that file exists and contains a valid directory path, the new Pelican
project will be saved at that location. Otherwise, the default is the
current working directory. To set the new project path on initial
invocation, use: pelican-quickstart --path /your/desired/directory
Once you finish answering all the questions, your project will consist
of the following hierarchy (except for pages -- shown in parentheses
below -- which you can optionally add yourself if you plan to create
non-chronological content):
yourproject/
content
| (pages)
output
tasks.py
Makefile
pelicanconf.py # Main settings file
publishconf.py # Settings to use when ready to publish
The next step is to begin to adding content to the content folder that
has been created for you.
Writing content
Articles and pages
Pelican considers "articles" to be chronological content, such as posts
on a blog, and thus associated with a date.
The idea behind "pages" is that they are usually not temporal in nature
and are used for content that does not change very often (e.g., "About"
or "Contact" pages).
You can find sample content in the repository at samples/content/.
File metadata
Pelican tries to be smart enough to get the information it needs from
the file system (for instance, about the category of your articles),
but some information you need to provide in the form of metadata inside
your files.
If you are writing your content in reStructuredText format, you can
provide this metadata in text files via the following syntax (give your
file the .rst extension):
My super title
##############
:date: 2010-10-03 10:20
:modified: 2010-10-04 18:40
:tags: thats, awesome
:category: yeah
:slug: my-super-post
:authors: Alexis Metaireau, Conan Doyle
:summary: Short version for index and feeds
Author and tag lists may be semicolon-separated instead, which allows
you to write authors and tags containing commas:
:tags: pelican, publishing tool; pelican, bird
:authors: Metaireau, Alexis; Doyle, Conan
Pelican implements an extension to reStructuredText to enable support
for the abbr HTML tag. To use it, write something like this in your
post:
This will be turned into :abbr:`HTML (HyperText Markup Language)`.
You can also use Markdown syntax (with a file ending in .md, .markdown,
.mkd, or .mdown). Markdown generation requires that you first
explicitly install the Python-Markdown package, which can be done via pip install Markdown.
Pelican also supports Markdown Extensions , which might have to be installed separately if
they are not included in the default Markdown package and can be
configured and loaded via the MARKDOWN setting.
Metadata syntax for Markdown posts should follow this pattern:
Title: My super title
Date: 2010-12-03 10:20
Modified: 2010-12-05 19:30
Category: Python
Tags: pelican, publishing
Slug: my-super-post
Authors: Alexis Metaireau, Conan Doyle
Summary: Short version for index and feeds
This is the content of my super blog post.
You can also have your own metadata keys (so long as they don't
conflict with reserved metadata keywords) for use in your templates.
The following table contains a list of reserved metadata keywords:
+------------+----------------------------+
|Metadata | Description |
+------------+----------------------------+
|title | Title of the article or |
| | page |
+------------+----------------------------+
|date | Publication date (e.g., |
| | YYYY-MM-DD HH:SS) |
+------------+----------------------------+
|modified | Modification date (e.g., |
| | YYYY-MM-DD HH:SS) |
+------------+----------------------------+
|tags | Content tags, separated by |
| | commas |
+------------+----------------------------+
|keywords | Content keywords, |
| | separated by commas (HTML |
| | content only) |
+------------+----------------------------+
|category | Content category (one only |
| | -- not multiple) |
+------------+----------------------------+
|slug | Identifier used in URLs |
| | and translations |
+------------+----------------------------+
|author | Content author, when there |
| | is only one |
+------------+----------------------------+
|authors | Content authors, when |
| | there are multiple |
+------------+----------------------------+
|summary | Brief description of |
| | content for index pages |
+------------+----------------------------+
|lang | Content language ID (en, |
| | fr, etc.) |
+------------+----------------------------+
|translation | If content is a |
| | translation of another |
| | (true or false) |
+------------+----------------------------+
|status | Content status: draft, |
| | hidden, skip, or published |
+------------+----------------------------+
|template | Name of template to use to |
| | generate content (without |
| | extension) |
+------------+----------------------------+
|save_as | Save content to this |
| | relative file path |
+------------+----------------------------+
|url | URL to use for this |
| | article/page |
+------------+----------------------------+
Readers for additional formats (such as AsciiDoc ) are available via plugins, which you can find via the Pelican
Plugins collection as well as the
legacy pelican-plugins
repository.
Pelican can also process HTML files ending in .html and .htm. Pelican
interprets the HTML in a very straightforward manner, reading metadata
from meta tags, the title from the title tag, and the body out from the
body tag:
My super title
This is the content of my super blog post.
With HTML, there is one simple exception to the standard metadata: tags
can be specified either via the tags metadata, as is standard in
Pelican, or via the keywords metadata, as is standard in HTML. The two
can be used interchangeably.
Note that, aside from the title, none of this content metadata is
mandatory: if the date is not specified and DEFAULT_DATE is set to
'fs', Pelican will rely on the file's "mtime" timestamp, and the
category can be determined by the directory in which the file resides.
For example, a file located at python/foobar/myfoobar.rst will have a
category of foobar. If you would like to organize your files in other
ways where the name of the subfolder would not be a good category name,
you can set the setting USE_FOLDER_AS_CATEGORY to False. When parsing
dates given in the page metadata, Pelican supports the W3C's suggested
subset ISO 8601 .
So the title is the only required metadata. If that bothers you, worry
not. Instead of manually specifying a title in your metadata each
time, you can use the source content file name as the title. For
example, a Markdown source file named Publishing via Pelican.md would
automatically be assigned a title of Publishing via Pelican. If you
would prefer this behavior, add the following line to your settings
file:
FILENAME_METADATA = '(?P.*)'
Note:
When experimenting with different settings (especially the metadata
ones) caching may interfere and the changes may not be visible. In
such cases disable caching with LOAD_CONTENT_CACHE = False or use
the --ignore-cache command-line switch.
modified should be last time you updated the article, and defaults to
date if not specified. Besides you can show modified in the templates,
feed entries in feed readers will be updated automatically when you set
modified to the current date after you modified your article.
authors is a comma-separated list of article authors. If there's only
one author you can use author field.
If you do not explicitly specify summary metadata for a given post, the
SUMMARY_MAX_LENGTH setting can be used to specify how many words from
the beginning of an article are used as the summary. You can also use
an article's first N paragraphs as its summary using the
SUMMARY_MAX_PARAGRAPHS setting. If both settings are in use, the
specified number of paragraphs will be used but may be truncated to
respect the specified maximum length.
You can also extract any metadata from the filename through a regular
expression to be set in the FILENAME_METADATA setting. All named groups
that are matched will be set in the metadata object. The default value
for the FILENAME_METADATA setting will only extract the date from the
filename. For example, if you would like to extract both the date and
the slug, you could set something like:
'(?P<date>\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2})_(?P<slug>.*)'
Please note that the metadata available inside your files takes
precedence over the metadata extracted from the filename.
Pages
If you create a folder named pages inside the content folder, all the
files in it will be used to generate static pages, such as About or
Contact pages. (See example filesystem layout below.)
You can use the DISPLAY_PAGES_ON_MENU setting to control whether all
those pages are displayed in the primary navigation menu. (Default is
True.)
If you want to exclude any pages from being linked to or listed in the
menu, then add a status: hidden attribute to its metadata. This is
useful for things like making error pages that fit the generated theme
of your site.
Static content
Static files are files other than articles and pages that are copied to
the output folder as-is, without processing. You can control which
static files are copied over with the STATIC_PATHS setting of the
project's pelicanconf.py file. Pelican's default configuration includes
the images directory for this, but others must be added manually. In
addition, static files that are explicitly linked to are included (see
below).
Note:
In the default configuration, all files with a valid content file
suffix (.html, .rst, .md, ...) get processed by the article and page
generators before the static generator. This is avoided by altering
the *_EXCLUDE settings appropriately.
Mixed content in the same directory
Starting with Pelican 3.5, static files can safely share a source
directory with page source files, without exposing the page sources in
the generated site. Any such directory must be added to both
STATIC_PATHS and PAGE_PATHS (or STATIC_PATHS and ARTICLE_PATHS).
Pelican will identify and process the page source files normally, and
copy the remaining files as if they lived in a separate directory
reserved for static files.
Note: Placing static and content source files together in the same
source directory does not guarantee that they will end up in the same
place in the generated site. The easiest way to do this is by using the
{attach} link syntax (described below). Alternatively, the
STATIC_SAVE_AS, PAGE_SAVE_AS, and ARTICLE_SAVE_AS settings (and the
corresponding *_URL settings) can be configured to place files of
different types together, just as they could in earlier versions of
Pelican.
Linking to internal content
From Pelican 3.1 onwards, it is now possible to specify intra-site
links to files in the source content hierarchy instead of files in the
generated hierarchy. This makes it easier to link from the current post
to other content that may be sitting alongside that post (instead of
having to determine where the other content will be placed after site
generation).
To link to internal content (files in the content directory), use the
following syntax for the link target: {filename}path/to/file. Note:
forward slashes, /, are the required path separator in the {filename}
directive on all operating systems, including Windows.
For example, a Pelican project might be structured like this:
website/
<?><?><?> content
| <?><?><?> category/
| | <?><?><?> article1.rst
| <?><?><?> article2.md
| <?><?><?> pages
| <?><?><?> about.md
<?><?><?> pelican.conf.py
In this example, article1.rst could look like this:
The first article
#################
:date: 2012-12-01 10:02
See below intra-site link examples in reStructuredText format.
`a link relative to the current file <{filename}../article2.md>`_
`a link relative to the content root <{filename}/article2.md>`_
and article2.md:
Title: The second article
Date: 2012-12-01 10:02
See below intra-site link examples in Markdown format.
[a link relative to the current file]({filename}category/article1.rst)
[a link relative to the content root]({filename}/category/article1.rst)
Linking to static files
You can link to static content using {static}path/to/file. Files linked
to with this syntax will automatically be copied to the output
directory, even if the source directories containing them are not
included in the STATIC_PATHS setting of the project's pelicanconf.py
file.
For example, a project's content directory might be structured like
this:
content
<?><?><?> images
| <?><?><?> han.jpg
<?><?><?> pdfs
| <?><?><?> menu.pdf
<?><?><?> pages
<?><?><?> test.md
test.md would include:
[Our Menu]({static}/pdfs/menu.pdf)
Site generation would then copy han.jpg to output/images/han.jpg,
menu.pdf to output/pdfs/menu.pdf, and write the appropriate links in
test.md.
If you use {static} to link to an article or a page, this will be
turned into a link to its source code.
Attaching static files
Starting with Pelican 3.5, static files can be "attached" to a page or
article using this syntax for the link target: {attach}path/to/file.
This works like the {static} syntax, but also relocates the static file
into the linking document's output directory. If the static file
originates from a subdirectory beneath the linking document's source,
that relationship will be preserved on output. Otherwise, it will
become a sibling of the linking document.
This only works for linking to static files.
For example, a project's content directory might be structured like
this:
content
<?><?><?> blog
| <?><?><?> icons
| | <?><?><?> icon.png
| <?><?><?> photo.jpg
| <?><?><?> testpost.md
<?><?><?> downloads
<?><?><?> archive.zip
pelicanconf.py would include:
PATH = 'content'
ARTICLE_PATHS = ['blog']
ARTICLE_SAVE_AS = '{date:%Y}/{slug}.html'
ARTICLE_URL = '{date:%Y}/{slug}.html'
testpost.md would include:
Title: Test Post
Category: test
Date: 2014-10-31
[Downloadable File]({attach}/downloads/archive.zip)
Site generation would then produce an output directory structured like
this:
output
<?><?><?> 2014
<?><?><?> archive.zip
<?><?><?> icons
| <?><?><?> icon.png
<?><?><?> photo.jpg
<?><?><?> test-post.html
Notice that all the files linked using {attach} ended up in or beneath
the article's output directory.
If a static file is linked multiple times, the relocating feature of
{attach} will only work in the first of those links to be processed.
After the first link, Pelican will treat {attach} like {static}. This
avoids breaking the already-processed links.
Be careful when linking to a file from multiple documents: Since the
first link to a file finalizes its location and Pelican does not define
the order in which documents are processed, using {attach} on a file
linked by multiple documents can cause its location to change from one
site build to the next. (Whether this happens in practice will depend
on the operating system, file system, version of Pelican, and documents
being added, modified, or removed from the project.) Any external sites
linking to the file's old location might then find their links broken.
It is therefore advisable to use {attach} only if you use it in all
links to a file, and only if the linking documents share a single
directory. Under these conditions, the file's output location will not
change in future builds. In cases where these precautions are not
possible, consider using {static} links instead of {attach}, and
letting the file's location be determined by the project's
STATIC_SAVE_AS and STATIC_URL settings. (Per-file save_as and url
overrides can still be set in EXTRA_PATH_METADATA.)
Note:
When using {attach}, any parent directory in *_URL / *_SAVE_AS
settings should match each other. See also: URL settings <#url-
settings>
Linking to authors, categories, index and tags
You can link to authors, categories, index and tags using the
{author}name, {category}foobar, {index} and {tag}tagname syntax.
Deprecated internal link syntax
To remain compatible with earlier versions, Pelican still supports
vertical bars (||) in addition to curly braces ({}) for internal links.
For example: |filename|an_article.rst, |tag|tagname, |category|foobar.
The syntax was changed from || to {} to avoid collision with Markdown
extensions or reST directives. Similarly, Pelican also still supports
linking to static content with {filename}. The syntax was changed to
{static} to allow linking to both generated articles and pages and
their static sources.
Support for the old syntax may eventually be removed.
Including other files
Both Markdown and reStructuredText syntaxes provide mechanisms for
this.
Following below are some examples for reStructuredText using the
include directive <http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/
directives.html#include>:
.. include:: file.rst
Include a fragment of a file delimited by two identifiers, highlighted
as C++ (slicing based on line numbers is also possible):
.. include:: main.cpp
:code: c++
:start-after: // begin
:end-before: // end
Include a raw HTML file (or an inline SVG) and put it directly into the
output without any processing:
.. raw:: html
:file: table.html
For Markdown, one must rely on an extension. For example, using the
mdx_include plugin <https://github.com/neurobin/mdx_include>:
```html
{! template.html !}
```
Importing an existing site
It is possible to import your site from several other blogging sites
(like WordPress, Tumblr, ..) using a simple script. See Importing an
existing site <#import>.
Translations
It is possible to translate articles. To do so, you need to add a lang
meta attribute to your articles/pages and set a DEFAULT_LANG setting
(which is English [en] by default). With those settings in place, only
articles with the default language will be listed, and each article
will be accompanied by a list of available translations for that
article.
Note:
This core Pelican functionality does not create sub-sites (e.g.
example.com/de) with translated templates for each language. For
such advanced functionality the i18n_subsites plugin <https://github
.com/getpelican/pelican-plugins/tree/master/i18n_subsites> can be
used.
By default, Pelican uses the article's URL "slug" to determine if two
or more articles are translations of one another. (This can be changed
with the ARTICLE_TRANSLATION_ID setting.) The slug can be set manually
in the file's metadata; if not set explicitly, Pelican will
auto-generate the slug from the title of the article.
Here is an example of two articles, one in English and the other in
French.
The English article:
Foobar is not dead
##################
:slug: foobar-is-not-dead
:lang: en
That's true, foobar is still alive!
And the French version:
Foobar n'est pas mort !
#######################
:slug: foobar-is-not-dead
:lang: fr
Oui oui, foobar est toujours vivant !
Post content quality notwithstanding, you can see that only item in
common between the two articles is the slug, which is functioning here
as an identifier. If you'd rather not explicitly define the slug this
way, you must then instead ensure that the translated article titles
are identical, since the slug will be auto-generated from the article
title.
If you do not want the original version of one specific article to be
detected by the DEFAULT_LANG setting, use the translation metadata to
specify which posts are translations:
Foobar is not dead
##################
:slug: foobar-is-not-dead
:lang: en
:translation: true
That's true, foobar is still alive!
Syntax highlighting
Pelican can provide colorized syntax highlighting for your code blocks.
To do so, you must use the following conventions inside your content
files.
For reStructuredText, use the code-block directive to specify the type
of code to be highlighted (in these examples, we'll use python):
.. code-block:: python
print("Pelican is a static site generator.")
For Markdown, which utilizes the CodeHilite extension <https://python-
markdown.github.io/extensions/code_hilite/#syntax> to provide syntax
highlighting, include the language identifier just above the code
block, indenting both the identifier and the code:
There are two ways to specify the identifier:
:::python
print("The triple-colon syntax will *not* show line numbers.")
To display line numbers, use a path-less shebang instead of colons:
#!python
print("The path-less shebang syntax *will* show line numbers.")
The specified identifier (e.g. python, ruby) should be one that appears
on the list of available lexers <https://pygments.org/docs/lexers/>.
When using reStructuredText the following options are available in the
code-block directive:
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|Option | Valid values | Description |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|anchorlinenos | N/A | If present, wrap |
| | | line numbers in <a> |
| | | tags. |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|classprefix | string | String to prepend |
| | | to token class |
| | | names |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|hl_lines | numbers | List of lines to be |
| | | highlighted, where |
| | | line numbers to |
| | | highlight are |
| | | separated by a |
| | | space. This is |
| | | similar to |
| | | emphasize-lines in |
| | | Sphinx, but it does |
| | | not support a range |
| | | of line numbers |
| | | separated by a |
| | | hyphen, or |
| | | comma-separated |
| | | line numbers. |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|lineanchors | string | Wrap each line in |
| | | an anchor using |
| | | this string and |
| | | -linenumber. |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|linenos | string | If present or set |
| | | to "table", output |
| | | line numbers in a |
| | | table; if set to |
| | | "inline", output |
| | | them inline. "none" |
| | | means do not output |
| | | the line numbers |
| | | for this table. |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|linenospecial | number | If set, every nth |
| | | line will be given |
| | | the 'special' CSS |
| | | class. |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|linenostart | number | Line number for the |
| | | first line. |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|linenostep | number | Print every nth |
| | | line number. |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|lineseparator | string | String to print |
| | | between lines of |
| | | code, 'n' by |
| | | default. |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|linespans | string | Wrap each line in a |
| | | span using this and |
| | | -linenumber. |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|nobackground | N/A | If set, do not |
| | | output background |
| | | color for the |
| | | wrapping element |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|nowrap | N/A | If set, do not wrap |
| | | the tokens at all. |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|tagsfile | string | ctags file to use |
| | | for name |
| | | definitions. |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
|tagurlformat | string | format for the ctag |
| | | links. |
+--------------+--------------+---------------------+
Note that, depending on the version, your Pygments module might not
have all of these options available. Refer to the HtmlFormatter section
of the Pygments documentation <https://pygments.org/docs/formatters/>
for more details on each of the options.
For example, the following code block enables line numbers, starting at
153, and prefixes the Pygments CSS classes with pgcss to make the names
more unique and avoid possible CSS conflicts:
.. code-block:: identifier
:classprefix: pgcss
:linenos: table
:linenostart: 153
<indented code block goes here>
It is also possible to specify the PYGMENTS_RST_OPTIONS variable in
your Pelican settings file to include options that will be
automatically applied to every code block.
For example, if you want to have line numbers displayed for every code
block and a CSS prefix, you would set this variable to:
PYGMENTS_RST_OPTIONS = {'classprefix': 'pgcss', 'linenos': 'table'}
If specified, settings for individual code blocks will override the
defaults in your settings file.
Publishing drafts
If you want to publish an article or a page as a draft (for friends to
review before publishing, for example), you can add a Status: draft
attribute to its metadata. That article will then be output to the
drafts folder and not listed on the index page nor on any category or
tag page.
If your articles should be automatically published as a draft (to not
accidentally publish an article before it is finished), include the
status in the DEFAULT_METADATA:
DEFAULT_METADATA = {
'status': 'draft',
}
To publish a post when the default status is draft, update the post's
metadata to include Status: published.
Hidden Posts
Like pages, posts can also be marked as hidden with the Status: hidden
attribute. Hidden posts will be output to ARTICLE_SAVE_AS as expected,
but are not included by default in tag, category, and author indexes,
nor in the main article feed. This has the effect of creating an
"unlisted" post.
Skip Posts
Posts marked with skip status are ignored entirely. They are not
processed nor output to the ARTICLE_SAVE_AS path. Such posts will
similarly not be included in indexes or feeds.
Publish your site
Site generation
Once Pelican is installed and you have some content (e.g., in Markdown
or reST format), you can convert your content into HTML via the pelican
command, specifying the path to your content and (optionally) the path
to your settings <> file:
pelican /path/to/your/content/ [-s path/to/your/settings.py]
The above command will generate your site and save it in the output/
folder, using the default theme to produce a simple site. The default
theme consists of very simple HTML without styling and is provided so
folks may use it as a basis for creating their own themes.
You can also tell Pelican to watch for your modifications, instead of
manually re-running it every time you want to see your changes. To
enable this, run the pelican command with the -r or --autoreload
option. On non-Windows environments, this option can also be combined
with the -l or --listen option to simultaneously both auto-regenerate
and serve the output at <http://localhost:8000>:
pelican --autoreload --listen
Pelican has other command-line switches available. Have a look at the
help to see all the options you can use:
pelican --help
Viewing the generated files
The files generated by Pelican are static files, so you don't actually
need anything special to view them. You can use your browser to open
the generated HTML files directly:
firefox output/index.html
Because the above method may have trouble locating your CSS and other
linked assets, running Pelican's simple built-in web server will often
provide a more reliable previewing experience:
pelican --listen
Once the web server has been started, you can preview your site at:
<http://localhost:8000/>
Deployment
After you have generated your site, previewed it in your local
development environment, and are ready to deploy it to production, you
might first re-generate your site with any production-specific settings
(e.g., analytics, feeds, etc.) that you may have defined:
pelican content -s publishconf.py
To base your publish configuration on top of your pelicanconf.py, you
can import your pelicanconf settings by including the following line in
your publishconf.py:
from pelicanconf import *
If you have generated a publishconf.py using pelican-quickstart, this
line is included by default.
The steps for deploying your site will depend on where it will be
hosted. If you have SSH access to a server running Nginx or Apache, you
might use the rsync tool to transmit your site files:
rsync -avc --delete output/ host.example.com:/var/www/your-site/
There are many other deployment options, some of which can be
configured when first setting up your site via the pelican-quickstart
command. See the Tips <> page for detail on publishing via GitHub
Pages.
Automation
While the pelican command is the canonical way to generate your site,
automation tools can be used to streamline the generation and
publication flow. One of the questions asked during the
pelican-quickstart process pertains to whether you want to automate
site generation and publication. If you answered "yes" to that
question, a tasks.py and Makefile will be generated in the root of your
project. These files, pre-populated with certain information gleaned
from other answers provided during the pelican-quickstart process, are
meant as a starting point and should be customized to fit your
particular needs and usage patterns. If you find one or both of these
automation tools to be of limited utility, these files can be deleted
at any time and will not affect usage of the canonical pelican command.
Following are automation tools that "wrap" the pelican command and can
simplify the process of generating, previewing, and uploading your
site.
Invoke
The advantage of Invoke <https://www.pyinvoke.org/> is that it is
written in Python and thus can be used in a wide range of environments.
The downside is that it must be installed separately. Use the following
command to install Invoke, prefixing with sudo if your environment
requires it:
python -m pip install invoke
Take a moment to open the tasks.py file that was generated in your
project root. You will see a number of commands, any one of which can
be renamed, removed, and/or customized to your liking. Using the
out-of-the-box configuration, you can generate your site via:
invoke build
If you'd prefer to have Pelican automatically regenerate your site
every time a change is detected (which is handy when testing locally),
use the following command instead:
invoke regenerate
To serve the generated site so it can be previewed in your browser at
<http://localhost:8000/>:
invoke serve
To serve the generated site with automatic browser reloading every time
a change is detected, first python -m pip install livereload, then use
the following command:
invoke livereload
If during the pelican-quickstart process you answered "yes" when asked
whether you want to upload your site via SSH, you can use the following
command to publish your site via rsync over SSH:
invoke publish
These are just a few of the commands available by default, so feel free
to explore tasks.py and see what other commands are available. More
importantly, don't hesitate to customize tasks.py to suit your specific
needs and preferences.
Make
A Makefile is also automatically created for you when you say "yes" to
the relevant question during the pelican-quickstart process. The
advantage of this method is that the make command is built into most
POSIX systems and thus doesn't require installing anything else in
order to use it. The downside is that non-POSIX systems (e.g., Windows)
do not include make, and installing it on those systems can be a
non-trivial task.
If you want to use make to generate your site using the settings in
pelicanconf.py, run:
make html
To generate the site for production, using the settings in
publishconf.py, run:
make publish
If you'd prefer to have Pelican automatically regenerate your site
every time a change is detected (which is handy when testing locally),
use the following command instead:
make regenerate
To serve the generated site so it can be previewed in your browser at
<http://localhost:8000/>:
make serve
Normally you would need to run make regenerate and make serve in two
separate terminal sessions, but you can run both at once via:
make devserver
The above command will simultaneously run Pelican in regeneration mode
as well as serve the output at <http://localhost:8000>.
When you're ready to publish your site, you can upload it via the
method(s) you chose during the pelican-quickstart questionnaire. For
this example, we'll use rsync over ssh:
make rsync_upload
That's it! Your site should now be live.
(The default Makefile and devserver.sh scripts use the python and
pelican executables to complete its tasks. If you want to use different
executables, such as python3, you can set the PY and PELICAN
environment variables, respectively, to override the default executable
names.)
Settings
Pelican is configurable thanks to a settings file you can pass to the
command line:
pelican content -s path/to/your/pelicanconf.py
If you used the pelican-quickstart command, your primary settings file
will be named pelicanconf.py by default.
You can also specify settings via -e / --extra-settings option flags.
It will override default settings as well as any defined within the
setting file. Note that values must follow JSON notation:
pelican content -e SITENAME='"A site"' READERS='{"html": null}' CACHE_CONTENT=true
Environment variables can also be used here but must be escaped
appropriately:
pelican content -e API_KEY=''\"$API_KEY\"''
Note:
When experimenting with different settings (especially the metadata
ones) caching may interfere and the changes may not be visible. In
such cases disable caching with LOAD_CONTENT_CACHE = False or use
the --ignore-cache command-line switch.
Settings are configured in the form of a Python module (a file). There
is an example settings file <https://raw.githubusercontent.com/
getpelican/pelican/main/samples/pelican.conf.py> available for
reference.
To see a list of current settings in your environment, including both
default and any customized values, run the following command (append
one or more specific setting names as arguments to see values for those
settings only):
pelican --print-settings
All the setting identifiers must be set in all-caps, otherwise they
will not be processed. Setting values that are numbers (5, 20, etc.),
booleans (True, False, None, etc.), dictionaries, or tuples should not
be enclosed in quotation marks. All other values (i.e., strings) must
be enclosed in quotation marks.
Unless otherwise specified, settings that refer to paths can be either
absolute or relative to the configuration file. The settings you define
in the configuration file will be passed to the templates, which allows
you to use your settings to add site-wide content.
Here is a list of settings for Pelican:
Basic settings
USE_FOLDER_AS_CATEGORY = True
When you don't specify a category in your post metadata, set
this setting to True, and organize your articles in subfolders,
the subfolder will become the category of your post. If set to
False, DEFAULT_CATEGORY will be used as a fallback.
DEFAULT_CATEGORY = 'misc'
The default category to fall back on.
DISPLAY_PAGES_ON_MENU = True
Whether to display pages on the menu of the template. Templates
may or may not honor this setting.
DISPLAY_CATEGORIES_ON_MENU = True
Whether to display categories on the menu of the template.
Templates may or not honor this setting.
DOCUTILS_SETTINGS = {}
Extra configuration settings for the docutils publisher
(applicable only to reStructuredText). See Docutils
Configuration <http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/config
.html> settings for more details.
DELETE_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY = False
Delete the output directory, and all of its contents, before
generating new files. This can be useful in preventing older,
unnecessary files from persisting in your output. However, this
is a destructive setting and should be handled with extreme
care.
OUTPUT_RETENTION = []
A list of filenames that should be retained and not deleted from
the output directory. One use case would be the preservation of
version control data.
Example:
OUTPUT_RETENTION = [".hg", ".git", ".bzr"]
JINJA_ENVIRONMENT = {'trim_blocks': True, 'lstrip_blocks': True}
A dictionary of custom Jinja2 environment variables you want to
use. This also includes a list of extensions you may want to
include. See Jinja Environment documentation <https://jinja
.palletsprojects.com/en/latest/api/#jinja2.Environment>.
JINJA_FILTERS = {}
A dictionary of custom Jinja2 filters you want to use. The
dictionary should map the filtername to the filter function.
Example:
import sys
sys.path.append('to/your/path')
from custom_filter import urlencode_filter
JINJA_FILTERS = {'urlencode': urlencode_filter}
See: Jinja custom filters documentation <https://jinja
.palletsprojects.com/en/latest/api/#custom-filters>.
JINJA_GLOBALS = {}
A dictionary of custom objects to map into the Jinja2 global
environment namespace. The dictionary should map the global name
to the global variable/function. See: Jinja global namespace
documentation <https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/en/latest/api/#
the-global-namespace>.
JINJA_TESTS = {}
A dictionary of custom Jinja2 tests you want to use. The
dictionary should map test names to test functions. See: Jinja
custom tests documentation <https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/
en/latest/api/#custom-tests>.
LOG_FILTER = []
A list of tuples containing the logging level (up to warning)
and the message to be ignored.
Example:
LOG_FILTER = [(logging.WARN, 'TAG_SAVE_AS is set to False')]
READERS = {}
A dictionary of file extensions / Reader classes for Pelican to
process or ignore.
For example, to avoid processing .html files, set:
READERS = {'html': None}
To add a custom reader for the foo extension, set:
READERS = {'foo': FooReader}
IGNORE_FILES = ['**/.*']
A list of Unix glob patterns. Files and directories matching any
of these patterns or any of the commonly hidden files and
directories set by watchfiles.DefaultFilter will be ignored by
the processor. For example, the default ['**/.*'] will ignore
"hidden" files and directories, and ['__pycache__'] would ignore
Python 3's bytecode caches.
For a full list of the commonly hidden files set by
watchfiles.DefaultFilter, please refer to the watchfiles
documentation <https://watchfiles.helpmanual.io/api/filters/#
watchfiles.DefaultFilter.ignore_dirs>.
MARKDOWN = {...}
Extra configuration settings for the Markdown processor. Refer
to the Python Markdown documentation's Options section <https://
python-markdown.github.io/reference/#markdown> for a complete
list of supported options. The extensions option will be
automatically computed from the extension_configs option.
Defaults to:
MARKDOWN = {
'extension_configs': {
'markdown.extensions.codehilite': {'css_class': 'highlight'},
'markdown.extensions.extra': {},
'markdown.extensions.meta': {},
},
'output_format': 'html5',
}
Note:
The dictionary defined in your settings file will replace
this default one.
OUTPUT_PATH = 'output/'
Where to output the generated files. This should correspond to
your web server's virtual host root directory.
PATH Path to content directory to be processed by Pelican. If
undefined, and content path is not specified via an argument to
the pelican command, Pelican will use the current working
directory.
PAGE_PATHS = ['pages']
A list of directories and files to look at for pages, relative
to PATH.
PAGE_EXCLUDES = []
A list of directories to exclude when looking for pages in
addition to ARTICLE_PATHS.
ARTICLE_PATHS = ['']
A list of directories and files to look at for articles,
relative to PATH.
ARTICLE_EXCLUDES = []
A list of directories to exclude when looking for articles in
addition to PAGE_PATHS.
OUTPUT_SOURCES = False
Set to True if you want to copy the articles and pages in their
original format (e.g. Markdown or reStructuredText) to the
specified OUTPUT_PATH.
OUTPUT_SOURCES_EXTENSION = '.text'
Controls the extension that will be used by the
SourcesGenerator. Defaults to .text. If not a valid string the
default value will be used.
PLUGINS = None
The list of plugins to load. See Plugins <#plugins>.
PLUGIN_PATHS = []
A list of directories where to look for plugins. See Plugins <#
plugins>.
SITENAME = 'A Pelican Blog'
Your site name
SITEURL
Base URL of your web site. Not defined by default, so it is best
to specify your SITEURL; if you do not, feeds will not be
generated with properly-formed URLs. If your site is available
via HTTPS, this setting should begin with https:// -- otherwise
use http://. Then append your domain, with no trailing slash at
the end. Example: SITEURL = 'https://example.com'
STATIC_PATHS = ['images']
A list of directories (relative to PATH) in which to look for
static files. Such files will be copied to the output directory
without modification. Articles, pages, and other content source
files will normally be skipped, so it is safe for a directory to
appear both here and in PAGE_PATHS or ARTICLE_PATHS. Pelican's
default settings include the "images" directory here.
STATIC_EXCLUDES = []
A list of directories to exclude when looking for static files.
STATIC_EXCLUDE_SOURCES = True
If set to False, content source files will not be skipped when
copying files found in STATIC_PATHS. This setting is for
backward compatibility with Pelican releases before version 3.5.
It has no effect unless STATIC_PATHS contains a directory that
is also in ARTICLE_PATHS or PAGE_PATHS. If you are trying to
publish your site's source files, consider using the
OUTPUT_SOURCES setting instead.
STATIC_CREATE_LINKS = False
Create links instead of copying files. If the content and output
directories are on the same device, then create hard links.
Falls back to symbolic links if the output directory is on a
different filesystem. If symlinks are created, don't forget to
add the -L or --copy-links option to rsync when uploading your
site.
STATIC_CHECK_IF_MODIFIED = False
If set to True, and STATIC_CREATE_LINKS is False, compare mtimes
of content and output files, and only copy content files that
are newer than existing output files.
TYPOGRIFY = False
If set to True, several typographical improvements will be
incorporated into the generated HTML via the Typogrify <https://
pypi.org/project/typogrify/> library, which can be installed
via: python -m pip install typogrify
TYPOGRIFY_IGNORE_TAGS = []
A list of tags for Typogrify to ignore. By default Typogrify
will ignore pre and code tags. This requires that Typogrify
version 2.0.4 or later is installed.
TYPOGRIFY_OMIT_FILTERS = []
A list of Typogrify filters to skip. Allowed values are: 'amp',
'smartypants', 'caps', 'initial_quotes', 'widont'. By default,
no filter is omitted (in other words, all filters get applied).
This setting requires that Typogrify version 2.1.0 or later is
installed.
TYPOGRIFY_DASHES = 'default'
This setting controls how Typogrify sets up the Smartypants
filter to interpret multiple dash/hyphen/minus characters. A
single ASCII dash character (-) is always rendered as a hyphen.
The default setting does not handle en-dashes and converts
double-hyphens into em-dashes. The oldschool setting renders
both en-dashes and em-dashes when it sees two (--) and three
(---) hyphen characters, respectively. The oldschool_inverted
setting turns two hyphens into an em-dash and three hyphens into
an en-dash.
SUMMARY_MAX_LENGTH = 50
When creating a short summary of an article, this will be the
default length (measured in words) of the text created. This
only applies if your content does not otherwise specify a
summary. Setting to None will cause the summary to be a copy of
the original content.
SUMMARY_MAX_PARAGRAPHS = None
When creating a short summary of an article, this will be the
number of paragraphs to use as the summary. This only applies if
your content does not otherwise specify a summary. Setting to
None will cause the summary to use the whole text (up to
SUMMARY_MAX_LENGTH) instead of just the first N paragraphs.
SUMMARY_END_SUFFIX = '<?>'
When creating a short summary of an article and the result was
truncated to match the required word length, this will be used
as the truncation suffix.
WITH_FUTURE_DATES = True
If disabled, content with dates in the future will get a default
status of draft. See Reading only modified content for caveats.
INTRASITE_LINK_REGEX = '[{|](?P<what>.*?)[|}]'
Regular expression that is used to parse internal links. Default
syntax when linking to internal files, tags, etc., is to enclose
the identifier, say filename, in {} or ||. Identifier between {
and } goes into the what capturing group. For details see
Linking to internal content <#ref-linking-to-internal-content>.
PYGMENTS_RST_OPTIONS = []
A list of default Pygments settings for your reStructuredText
code blocks. See Syntax highlighting <#internal-pygments-
options> for a list of supported options.
CACHE_CONTENT = False
If True, saves content in caches. See Reading only modified
content for details about caching.
CONTENT_CACHING_LAYER = 'reader'
If set to 'reader', save only the raw content and metadata
returned by readers. If set to 'generator', save processed
content objects.
CACHE_PATH = 'cache'
Directory in which to store cache files.
GZIP_CACHE = True
If True, use gzip to (de)compress the cache files.
CHECK_MODIFIED_METHOD = 'mtime'
Controls how files are checked for modifications.
o If set to 'mtime', the modification time of the file is
checked.
o If set to a name of a function provided by the hashlib module,
e.g. 'md5', the file hash is checked.
LOAD_CONTENT_CACHE = False
If True, load unmodified content from caches.
FORMATTED_FIELDS = ['summary']
A list of metadata fields containing reST/Markdown content to be
parsed and translated to HTML.
PORT = 8000
The TCP port to serve content from the output folder via HTTP
when pelican is run with --listen
BIND = ''
The IP to which to bind the HTTP server.
URL settings
The first thing to understand is that there are currently two supported
methods for URL formation: relative and absolute. Relative URLs are
useful when testing locally, and absolute URLs are reliable and most
useful when publishing. One method of supporting both is to have one
Pelican configuration file for local development and another for
publishing. To see an example of this type of setup, use the
pelican-quickstart script as described in the Installation <> section,
which will produce two separate configuration files for local
development and publishing, respectively.
You can customize the URLs and locations where files will be saved. The
*_URL and *_SAVE_AS variables use Python's format strings. These
variables allow you to place your articles in a location such as
{slug}/index.html and link to them as {slug} for clean URLs (see
example below). These settings give you the flexibility to place your
articles and pages anywhere you want.
Note:
If a *_SAVE_AS setting contains a parent directory that doesn't
match the parent directory inside the corresponding *_URL setting,
this may cause Pelican to generate unexpected URLs in a few cases,
such as when using the {attach} syntax.
If you don't want that flexibility and instead prefer that your
generated output paths mirror your source content's filesystem path
hierarchy, try the following settings:
PATH_METADATA = '(?P<path_no_ext>.*)\..*'
ARTICLE_URL = ARTICLE_SAVE_AS = PAGE_URL = PAGE_SAVE_AS = '{path_no_ext}.html'
Otherwise, you can use a variety of file metadata attributes within
URL-related settings:
o slug
o date
o lang
o author
o category
Example usage:
ARTICLE_URL = 'posts/{date:%Y}/{date:%b}/{date:%d}/{slug}/'
ARTICLE_SAVE_AS = 'posts/{date:%Y}/{date:%b}/{date:%d}/{slug}/index.html'
PAGE_URL = 'pages/{slug}/'
PAGE_SAVE_AS = 'pages/{slug}/index.html'
This would save your articles into something like
/posts/2011/Aug/07/sample-post/index.html, save your pages into
/pages/about/index.html, and render them available at URLs of
/posts/2011/Aug/07/sample-post/ and /pages/about/, respectively.
Note:
If you specify a datetime directive, it will be substituted using
the input files' date metadata attribute. If the date is not
specified for a particular file, Pelican will rely on the file's
mtime timestamp. Check the Python datetime documentation <https://
docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-
behavior> for more information.
RELATIVE_URLS = False
Defines whether Pelican should use document-relative URLs or
not. Only set this to True when developing/testing and only if
you fully understand the effect it can have on links/feeds.
ARTICLE_URL = '{slug}.html'
The URL to refer to an article.
ARTICLE_SAVE_AS = '{slug}.html'
The place where we will save an article.
ARTICLE_LANG_URL = '{slug}-{lang}.html'
The URL to refer to an article which doesn't use the default
language.
ARTICLE_LANG_SAVE_AS = '{slug}-{lang}.html'
The place where we will save an article which doesn't use the
default language.
DRAFT_URL = 'drafts/{slug}.html'
The URL to refer to an article draft.
DRAFT_SAVE_AS = 'drafts/{slug}.html'
The place where we will save an article draft.
DRAFT_LANG_URL = 'drafts/{slug}-{lang}.html'
The URL to refer to an article draft which doesn't use the
default language.
DRAFT_LANG_SAVE_AS = 'drafts/{slug}-{lang}.html'
The place where we will save an article draft which doesn't use
the default language.
PAGE_URL = 'pages/{slug}.html'
The URL we will use to link to a page.
PAGE_SAVE_AS = 'pages/{slug}.html'
The location we will save the page. This value has to be the
same as PAGE_URL or you need to use a rewrite in your server
config.
PAGE_LANG_URL = 'pages/{slug}-{lang}.html'
The URL we will use to link to a page which doesn't use the
default language.
PAGE_LANG_SAVE_AS = 'pages/{slug}-{lang}.html'
The location we will save the page which doesn't use the default
language.
DRAFT_PAGE_URL = 'drafts/pages/{slug}.html'
The URL used to link to a page draft.
DRAFT_PAGE_SAVE_AS = 'drafts/pages/{slug}.html'
The actual location a page draft is saved at.
DRAFT_PAGE_LANG_URL = 'drafts/pages/{slug}-{lang}.html'
The URL used to link to a page draft which doesn't use the
default language.
DRAFT_PAGE_LANG_SAVE_AS = 'drafts/pages/{slug}-{lang}.html'
The actual location a page draft which doesn't use the default
language is saved at.
AUTHOR_URL = 'author/{slug}.html'
The URL to use for an author.
AUTHOR_SAVE_AS = 'author/{slug}.html'
The location to save an author.
CATEGORY_URL = 'category/{slug}.html'
The URL to use for a category.
CATEGORY_SAVE_AS = 'category/{slug}.html'
The location to save a category.
TAG_URL = 'tag/{slug}.html'
The URL to use for a tag.
TAG_SAVE_AS = 'tag/{slug}.html'
The location to save the tag page.
Note:
If you do not want one or more of the default pages to be created
(e.g., you are the only author on your site and thus do not need an
Authors page), set the corresponding *_SAVE_AS setting to '' to
prevent the relevant page from being generated.
Pelican can optionally create per-year, per-month, and per-day archives
of your posts. These secondary archives are disabled by default but are
automatically enabled if you supply format strings for their respective
_SAVE_AS settings. Period archives fit intuitively with the
hierarchical model of web URLs and can make it easier for readers to
navigate through the posts you've written over time.
Example usage:
YEAR_ARCHIVE_SAVE_AS = 'posts/{date:%Y}/index.html'
YEAR_ARCHIVE_URL = 'posts/{date:%Y}/'
MONTH_ARCHIVE_SAVE_AS = 'posts/{date:%Y}/{date:%b}/index.html'
MONTH_ARCHIVE_URL = 'posts/{date:%Y}/{date:%b}/'
With these settings, Pelican will create an archive of all your posts
for the year at (for instance) posts/2011/index.html and an archive of
all your posts for the month at posts/2011/Aug/index.html. These can be
accessed through the URLs posts/2011/ and posts/2011/Aug/,
respectively.
Note:
Period archives work best when the final path segment is index.html.
This way a reader can remove a portion of your URL and automatically
arrive at an appropriate archive of posts, without having to specify
a page name.
YEAR_ARCHIVE_SAVE_AS = ''
The location to save per-year archives of your posts.
YEAR_ARCHIVE_URL = ''
The URL to use for per-year archives of your posts. You should
set this if you enable per-year archives.
MONTH_ARCHIVE_SAVE_AS = ''
The location to save per-month archives of your posts.
MONTH_ARCHIVE_URL = ''
The URL to use for per-month archives of your posts. You should
set this if you enable per-month archives.
DAY_ARCHIVE_SAVE_AS = ''
The location to save per-day archives of your posts.
DAY_ARCHIVE_URL = ''
The URL to use for per-day archives of your posts. You should
set this if you enable per-day archives.
DIRECT_TEMPLATES work a bit differently than noted above. Only the
_SAVE_AS settings are available, but it is available for any direct
template.
ARCHIVES_SAVE_AS = 'archives.html'
The location to save the article archives page.
AUTHORS_SAVE_AS = 'authors.html'
The location to save the author list.
CATEGORIES_SAVE_AS = 'categories.html'
The location to save the category list.
TAGS_SAVE_AS = 'tags.html'
The location to save the tag list.
INDEX_SAVE_AS = 'index.html'
The location to save the list of all articles.
URLs for direct template pages are theme-dependent. Some themes use
corresponding *_URL setting as string, while others hard-code them:
'archives.html', 'authors.html', 'categories.html', 'tags.html'.
SLUGIFY_SOURCE = 'title'
Specifies from where you want the slug to be automatically
generated. Can be set to title to use the "Title:" metadata tag
or basename to use the article's file name when creating the
slug.
SLUGIFY_USE_UNICODE = False
Allow Unicode characters in slugs. Set True to keep Unicode
characters in auto-generated slugs. Otherwise, Unicode
characters will be replaced with ASCII equivalents.
SLUGIFY_PRESERVE_CASE = False
Preserve uppercase characters in slugs. Set True to keep
uppercase characters from SLUGIFY_SOURCE as-is.
SLUG_REGEX_SUBSTITUTIONS = [
(r'[^\\w\\s-]', ''), # remove non-alphabetical/whitespace/'-' chars
(r'(?u)\\A\\s*', ''), # strip leading whitespace
(r'(?u)\\s*\\Z', ''), # strip trailing whitespace
(r'[-\\s]+', '-'), # reduce multiple whitespace or '-' to single '-'
] Regex substitutions to make when generating slugs of articles
and pages. Specified as a list of pairs of (from, to) which are
applied in order, ignoring case. The default substitutions have
the effect of removing non-alphanumeric characters and
converting internal whitespace to dashes. Apart from these
substitutions, slugs are always converted to lowercase ascii
characters and leading and trailing whitespace is stripped.
Useful for backward compatibility with existing URLs.
AUTHOR_REGEX_SUBSTITUTIONS = SLUG_REGEX_SUBSTITUTIONS
Regex substitutions for author slugs. Defaults to
SLUG_REGEX_SUBSTITUTIONS.
CATEGORY_REGEX_SUBSTITUTIONS = SLUG_REGEX_SUBSTITUTIONS
Regex substitutions for category slugs. Defaults to
SLUG_REGEX_SUBSTITUTIONS.
TAG_REGEX_SUBSTITUTIONS = SLUG_REGEX_SUBSTITUTIONS
Regex substitutions for tag slugs. Defaults to
SLUG_REGEX_SUBSTITUTIONS.
Time and Date
TIMEZONE
The timezone used in the date information, to generate Atom and
RSS feeds.
If no timezone is defined, UTC is assumed. This means that the
generated Atom and RSS feeds will contain incorrect date
information if your locale is not UTC.
Pelican issues a warning in case this setting is not defined, as
it was not mandatory in previous versions.
Have a look at the wikipedia page <https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones> to get a list of valid
timezone values.
DEFAULT_DATE = None
The default date you want to use. If 'fs', Pelican will use the
file system timestamp information (mtime) if it can't get date
information from the metadata. If given any other string, it
will be parsed by the same method as article metadata. If set
to a tuple object, the default datetime object will instead be
generated by passing the tuple to the datetime.datetime
constructor.
DEFAULT_DATE_FORMAT = '%a %d %B %Y'
The default date format you want to use.
DATE_FORMATS = {}
If you manage multiple languages, you can set the date
formatting here.
If no DATE_FORMATS are set, Pelican will fall back to
DEFAULT_DATE_FORMAT. If you need to maintain multiple languages
with different date formats, you can set the DATE_FORMATS
dictionary using the language name (lang metadata in your post
content) as the key.
In addition to the standard C89 strftime format codes that are
listed in Python datetime documentation <https://docs.python
.org/3/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-behavior>,
you can use the - character between % and the format character
to remove any leading zeros. For example, %d/%m/%Y will output
01/01/2014 whereas %-d/%-m/%Y will result in 1/1/2014.
DATE_FORMATS = {
'en': '%a, %d %b %Y',
'jp': '%Y-%m-%d(%a)',
}
It is also possible to set different locale settings for each
language by using a (locale, format) tuple as a dictionary value
which will override the LOCALE setting:
# On Unix/Linux
DATE_FORMATS = {
'en': ('en_US','%a, %d %b %Y'),
'jp': ('ja_JP','%Y-%m-%d(%a)'),
}
# On Windows
DATE_FORMATS = {
'en': ('usa','%a, %d %b %Y'),
'jp': ('jpn','%Y-%m-%d(%a)'),
}
LOCALE Change the locale [1]. A list of locales can be provided here or
a single string representing one locale. When providing a list,
all the locales will be tried until one works.
You can set locale to further control date format:
LOCALE = ('usa', 'jpn', # On Windows
'en_US', 'ja_JP' # On Unix/Linux
)
For a list of available locales refer to locales on Windows
<https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=55979>
or on Unix/Linux, use the locale -a command; see manpage
locale(1) <https://linux.die.net/man/1/locale> for more
information.
[1] Default is the system locale.
Template pages
TEMPLATE_PAGES = None
A mapping containing template pages that will be rendered with
the blog entries.
If you want to generate custom pages besides your blog entries,
you can point any Jinja2 template file with a path pointing to
the file and the destination path for the generated file.
For instance, if you have a blog with three static pages -- a
list of books, your resume, and a contact page -- you could
have:
TEMPLATE_PAGES = {'src/books.html': 'dest/books.html',
'src/resume.html': 'dest/resume.html',
'src/contact.html': 'dest/contact.html'}
TEMPLATE_EXTENSIONS = ['.html']
The extensions to use when looking up template files from
template names.
DIRECT_TEMPLATES = ['index', 'authors', 'categories', 'tags',
'archives']
List of templates that are used directly to render content.
Typically direct templates are used to generate index pages for
collections of content (e.g., category and tag index pages). If
the author, category and tag collections are not needed, set
DIRECT_TEMPLATES = ['index', 'archives']
DIRECT_TEMPLATES are searched for over paths maintained in
THEME_TEMPLATES_OVERRIDES.
Metadata
AUTHOR Default author (usually your name).
DEFAULT_METADATA = {}
The default metadata you want to use for all articles and pages.
FILENAME_METADATA = r'(?P<date>\\d{4}-\\d{2}-\\d{2}).*'
The regexp that will be used to extract any metadata from the
filename. All named groups that are matched will be set in the
metadata object. The default value will only extract the date
from the filename.
For example, to extract both the date and the slug:
FILENAME_METADATA = r'(?P<date>\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2})_(?P<slug>.*)'
See also SLUGIFY_SOURCE.
PATH_METADATA = ''
Like FILENAME_METADATA, but parsed from a page's full path
relative to the content source directory.
EXTRA_PATH_METADATA = {}
Extra metadata dictionaries keyed by relative path. Relative
paths require correct OS-specific directory separators (i.e. /
in UNIX and \ in Windows) unlike some other Pelican file
settings. Paths to a directory apply to all files under it. The
most-specific path wins conflicts.
Not all metadata needs to be embedded in source file itself <#internal-
metadata>. For example, blog posts are often named following a
YYYY-MM-DD-SLUG.rst pattern, or nested into YYYY/MM/DD-SLUG
directories. To extract metadata from the filename or path, set
FILENAME_METADATA or PATH_METADATA to regular expressions that use
Python's group name notation <https://docs.python.org/3/library/re
.html#regular-expression-syntax> (?P<name><?>). If you want to attach
additional metadata but don't want to encode it in the path, you can
set EXTRA_PATH_METADATA:
EXTRA_PATH_METADATA = {
'relative/path/to/file-1': {
'key-1a': 'value-1a',
'key-1b': 'value-1b',
},
'relative/path/to/file-2': {
'key-2': 'value-2',
},
}
This can be a convenient way to shift the installed location of a
particular file:
# Take advantage of the following defaults
# STATIC_SAVE_AS = '{path}'
# STATIC_URL = '{path}'
STATIC_PATHS = [
'static/robots.txt',
]
EXTRA_PATH_METADATA = {
'static/robots.txt': {'path': 'robots.txt'},
}
Feed settings
By default, Pelican uses Atom feeds. However, it is also possible to
use RSS feeds if you prefer.
Pelican generates category feeds as well as feeds for all your
articles. It does not generate feeds for tags by default, but it is
possible to do so using the TAG_FEED_ATOM and TAG_FEED_RSS settings:
FEED_DOMAIN = None, i.e. base URL is "/"
The domain prepended to feed URLs. Since feed URLs should always
be absolute, it is highly recommended to define this (e.g.,
"<https://feeds.example.com>"). If you have already explicitly
defined SITEURL (see above) and want to use the same domain for
your feeds, you can just set: FEED_DOMAIN = SITEURL.
FEED_ATOM = None, i.e. no Atom feed
The location to save the Atom feed.
FEED_ATOM_URL = None
Relative URL of the Atom feed. If not set, FEED_ATOM is used
both for save location and URL.
FEED_RSS = None, i.e. no RSS
The location to save the RSS feed.
FEED_RSS_URL = None
Relative URL of the RSS feed. If not set, FEED_RSS is used both
for save location and URL.
FEED_ALL_ATOM = 'feeds/all.atom.xml'
The location to save the all-posts Atom feed: this feed will
contain all posts regardless of their language.
FEED_ALL_ATOM_URL = None
Relative URL of the all-posts Atom feed. If not set,
FEED_ALL_ATOM is used both for save location and URL.
FEED_ALL_RSS = None, i.e. no all-posts RSS
The location to save the the all-posts RSS feed: this feed will
contain all posts regardless of their language.
FEED_ALL_RSS_URL = None
Relative URL of the all-posts RSS feed. If not set, FEED_ALL_RSS
is used both for save location and URL.
CATEGORY_FEED_ATOM = 'feeds/{slug}.atom.xml'
The location to save the category Atom feeds. [2]
CATEGORY_FEED_ATOM_URL = None
Relative URL of the category Atom feeds, including the {slug}
placeholder. [2] If not set, CATEGORY_FEED_ATOM is used both for
save location and URL.
CATEGORY_FEED_RSS = None, i.e. no RSS
The location to save the category RSS feeds, including the
{slug} placeholder. [2]
CATEGORY_FEED_RSS_URL = None
Relative URL of the category RSS feeds, including the {slug}
placeholder. [2] If not set, CATEGORY_FEED_RSS is used both for
save location and URL.
AUTHOR_FEED_ATOM = 'feeds/{slug}.atom.xml'
The location to save the author Atom feeds. [2]
AUTHOR_FEED_ATOM_URL = None
Relative URL of the author Atom feeds, including the {slug}
placeholder. [2] If not set, AUTHOR_FEED_ATOM is used both for
save location and URL.
AUTHOR_FEED_RSS = 'feeds/{slug}.rss.xml'
The location to save the author RSS feeds. [2]
AUTHOR_FEED_RSS_URL = None
Relative URL of the author RSS feeds, including the {slug}
placeholder. [2] If not set, AUTHOR_FEED_RSS is used both for
save location and URL.
TAG_FEED_ATOM = None, i.e. no tag feed
The location to save the tag Atom feed, including the {slug}
placeholder. [2]
TAG_FEED_ATOM_URL = None
Relative URL of the tag Atom feed, including the {slug}
placeholder. [2]
TAG_FEED_RSS = None, i.e. no RSS tag feed
Relative URL to output the tag RSS feed, including the {slug}
placeholder. If not set, TAG_FEED_RSS is used both for save
location and URL.
FEED_MAX_ITEMS = 100
Maximum number of items allowed in a feed. Setting to None will
cause the feed to contains every article. 100 if not specified.
RSS_FEED_SUMMARY_ONLY = True
Only include item summaries in the description tag of RSS feeds.
If set to False, the full content will be included instead. This
setting doesn't affect Atom feeds, only RSS ones.
FEED_APPEND_REF = False
If set to True, ?ref=feed will be appended to links in generated
feeds for the purpose of referrer tracking.
If you don't want to generate some or any of these feeds, set the above
variables to None.
[2] {slug} is replaced by name of the category / author / tag.
Pagination
The default behaviour of Pelican is to list all the article titles
along with a short description on the index page. While this works well
for small-to-medium sites, sites with a large quantity of articles will
probably benefit from paginating this list.
You can use the following settings to configure the pagination.
DEFAULT_ORPHANS = 0
The minimum number of articles allowed on the last page. Use
this when you don't want the last page to only contain a handful
of articles.
DEFAULT_PAGINATION = False
The maximum number of articles to include on a page, not
including orphans. False to disable pagination.
PAGINATED_TEMPLATES = {'index': None, 'tag': None, 'category': None,
'author': None}
The templates to use pagination with, and the number of articles
to include on a page. If this value is None, it defaults to
DEFAULT_PAGINATION.
PAGINATION_PATTERNS = (
(1, '{name}{extension}', '{name}{extension}'),
(2, '{name}{number}{extension}', '{name}{number}{extension}'),
)
A set of patterns that are used to determine advanced
pagination output.
Using Pagination Patterns
By default, pages subsequent to .../foo.html are created as
.../foo2.html, etc. The PAGINATION_PATTERNS setting can be used to
change this. It takes a sequence of triples, where each triple consists
of:
(minimum_page, page_url, page_save_as,)
For page_url and page_save_as, you may use a number of variables.
{url} and {save_as} correspond respectively to the *_URL and *_SAVE_AS
values of the corresponding page type (e.g. ARTICLE_SAVE_AS). If
{save_as} == foo/bar.html, then {name} == foo/bar and {extension} ==
.html. {base_name} equals {name} except that it strips trailing /index
if present. {number} equals the page number.
For example, if you want to leave the first page unchanged, but place
subsequent pages at .../page/2/ etc, you could set PAGINATION_PATTERNS
as follows:
PAGINATION_PATTERNS = (
(1, '{url}', '{save_as}'),
(2, '{base_name}/page/{number}/', '{base_name}/page/{number}/index.html'),
)
If you want a pattern to apply to the last page in the list, use -1 as
the minimum_page value:
(-1, '{base_name}/last/', '{base_name}/last/index.html'),
Translations
Pelican offers a way to translate articles. See the Content <> section
for more information.
DEFAULT_LANG = 'en'
The default language to use.
ARTICLE_TRANSLATION_ID = 'slug'
The metadata attribute(s) used to identify which articles are
translations of one another. May be a string or a collection of
strings. Set to None or False to disable the identification of
translations.
PAGE_TRANSLATION_ID = 'slug'
The metadata attribute(s) used to identify which pages are
translations of one another. May be a string or a collection of
strings. Set to None or False to disable the identification of
translations.
TRANSLATION_FEED_ATOM = 'feeds/all-{lang}.atom.xml'
The location to save the Atom feed for translations. [3]
TRANSLATION_FEED_ATOM_URL = None
Relative URL of the Atom feed for translations, including the
{lang} placeholder. [3] If not set, TRANSLATION_FEED_ATOM is
used both for save location and URL.
TRANSLATION_FEED_RSS = None, i.e. no RSS
Where to put the RSS feed for translations.
TRANSLATION_FEED_RSS_URL = None
Relative URL of the RSS feed for translations, including the
{lang} placeholder. [3] If not set, TRANSLATION_FEED_RSS is used
both for save location and URL.
[3] {lang} is the language code
Ordering content
NEWEST_FIRST_ARCHIVES = True
Order archives by newest first by date. (False: orders by date
with older articles first.)
REVERSE_CATEGORY_ORDER = False
Reverse the category order. (True: lists by reverse alphabetical
order; default lists alphabetically.)
ARTICLE_ORDER_BY = 'reversed-date'
Defines how the articles (articles_page.object_list in the
template) are sorted. Valid options are: metadata as a string
(use reversed- prefix to reverse the sort order), special option
'basename' which will use the basename of the file (without
path), or a custom function to extract the sorting key from
articles. Using a value of 'date' will sort articles in
chronological order, while the default value, 'reversed-date',
will sort articles by date in reverse order (i.e., newest
article comes first).
PAGE_ORDER_BY = 'basename'
Defines how the pages (pages variable in the template) are
sorted. Options are same as ARTICLE_ORDER_BY. The default
value, 'basename' will sort pages by their basename.
Themes
Creating Pelican themes is addressed in a dedicated section (see Themes
<#theming-pelican>). However, here are the settings that are related to
themes.
THEME Theme to use to produce the output. Can be a relative or
absolute path to a theme folder, or the name of a default theme
or a theme installed via pelican-themes <> (see below).
THEME_STATIC_DIR = 'theme'
Destination directory in the output path where Pelican will
place the files collected from THEME_STATIC_PATHS. Default is
theme.
THEME_STATIC_PATHS = ['static']
Static theme paths you want to copy. Default value is static,
but if your theme has other static paths, you can put them here.
If files or directories with the same names are included in the
paths defined in this settings, they will be progressively
overwritten.
THEME_TEMPLATES_OVERRIDES = []
A list of paths you want Jinja2 to search for templates before
searching the theme's templates/ directory. Allows for
overriding individual theme template files without having to
fork an existing theme. Jinja2 searches in the following order:
files in THEME_TEMPLATES_OVERRIDES first, then the theme's
templates/.
You can also extend templates from the theme using the {%
extends %} directive utilizing the !theme prefix as shown in the
following example:
{% extends '!theme/article.html' %}
CSS_FILE = 'main.css'
Specify the CSS file you want to load.
By default, two themes are available. You can specify them using the
THEME setting or by passing the -t option to the pelican command:
o notmyidea
o simple (a synonym for "plain text" :)
There are a number of other themes available at <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican-themes>. Pelican comes with pelican-themes <>, a
small script for managing themes.
You can define your own theme, either by starting from scratch or by
duplicating and modifying a pre-existing theme. Here is a guide on how
to create your theme <>.
Following are example ways to specify your preferred theme:
# Specify name of a built-in theme
THEME = "notmyidea"
# Specify name of a theme installed via the pelican-themes tool
THEME = "chunk"
# Specify a customized theme, via path relative to the settings file
THEME = "themes/mycustomtheme"
# Specify a customized theme, via absolute path
THEME = "/home/myuser/projects/mysite/themes/mycustomtheme"
The built-in simple theme can be customized using the following
settings.
STYLESHEET_URL
The URL of the stylesheet to use.
The built-in notmyidea theme can make good use of the following
settings. Feel free to use them in your themes as well.
SITESUBTITLE
A subtitle to appear in the header.
DISQUS_SITENAME
Pelican can handle Disqus comments. Specify the Disqus sitename
identifier here.
GITHUB_URL
Your GitHub URL (if you have one). It will then use this
information to create a GitHub ribbon.
ANALYTICS
Put any desired analytics scripts in this setting in
publishconf.py. Example:
ANALYTICS = """
<script src="/theme/js/primary-analytics.js"></script>
<script>
[ <?> in-line Javascript code for secondary analytics <?> ]
</script>
"""
MENUITEMS
A list of tuples (Title, URL) for additional menu items to
appear at the beginning of the main menu.
LINKS A list of tuples (Title, URL) for links to appear on the header.
SOCIAL A list of tuples (Title, URL) to appear in the "social" section.
TWITTER_USERNAME
Allows for adding a button to articles to encourage others to
tweet about them. Add your Twitter username if you want this
button to appear.
LINKS_WIDGET_NAME
Allows override of the name of the links widget. If not
specified, defaults to "links".
SOCIAL_WIDGET_NAME
Allows override of the name of the "social" widget. If not
specified, defaults to "social".
In addition, you can use the "wide" version of the notmyidea theme by
adding the following to your configuration:
CSS_FILE = "wide.css"
Logging
Sometimes, a long list of warnings may appear during site generation.
Finding the meaningful error message in the middle of tons of annoying
log output can be quite tricky. In order to filter out redundant log
messages, Pelican comes with the LOG_FILTER setting.
LOG_FILTER should be a list of tuples (level, msg), each of them being
composed of the logging level (up to warning) and the message to be
ignored. Simply populate the list with the log messages you want to
hide, and they will be filtered out.
For example:
import logging
LOG_FILTER = [(logging.WARN, 'TAG_SAVE_AS is set to False')]
It is possible to filter out messages by a template. Check out source
code to obtain a template.
For example:
import logging
LOG_FILTER = [(logging.WARN, 'Empty alt attribute for image %s in %s')]
Warning:
Silencing messages by templates is a dangerous feature. It is
possible to unintentionally filter out multiple message types with
the same template (including messages from future Pelican versions).
Proceed with caution.
Note:
This option does nothing if --debug is passed.
Reading only modified content
To speed up the build process, Pelican can optionally read only
articles and pages with modified content.
When Pelican is about to read some content source file:
1. The hash or modification time information for the file from a
previous build are loaded from a cache file if LOAD_CONTENT_CACHE is
True. These files are stored in the CACHE_PATH directory. If the
file has no record in the cache file, it is read as usual.
2. The file is checked according to CHECK_MODIFIED_METHOD:
o If set to 'mtime', the modification time of the file is
checked.
o If set to a name of a function provided by the hashlib module,
e.g. 'md5', the file hash is checked.
o If set to anything else or the necessary information about the
file cannot be found in the cache file, the content is read as
usual.
3. If the file is considered unchanged, the content data saved in a
previous build corresponding to the file is loaded from the cache,
and the file is not read.
4. If the file is considered changed, the file is read and the new
modification information and the content data are saved to the cache
if CACHE_CONTENT is True.
If CONTENT_CACHING_LAYER is set to 'reader' (the default), the raw
content and metadata returned by a reader are cached. If this setting
is instead set to 'generator', the processed content object is cached.
Caching the processed content object may conflict with plugins (as some
reading related signals may be skipped) and the WITH_FUTURE_DATES
functionality (as the draft status of the cached content objects would
not change automatically over time).
Checking modification times is faster than comparing file hashes, but
it is not as reliable because mtime information can be lost, e.g., when
copying content source files using the cp or rsync commands without the
mtime preservation mode (which for rsync can be invoked by passing the
--archive flag).
The cache files are Python pickles, so they may not be readable by
different versions of Python as the pickle format often changes. If
such an error is encountered, it is caught and the cache file is
rebuilt automatically in the new format. The cache files will also be
rebuilt after the GZIP_CACHE setting has been changed.
The --ignore-cache command-line option is useful when the whole cache
needs to be regenerated, such as when making modifications to the
settings file that will affect the cached content, or just for
debugging purposes. When Pelican runs in autoreload mode, modification
of the settings file will make it ignore the cache automatically if
AUTORELOAD_IGNORE_CACHE is True.
Note that even when using cached content, all output is always written,
so the modification times of the generated *.html files will always
change. Therefore, rsync-based uploading may benefit from the
--checksum option.
Example settings
AUTHOR = "Alexis Metaireau"
SITENAME = "Alexis' log"
SITESUBTITLE = "A personal blog."
SITEURL = "http://blog.notmyidea.org"
TIMEZONE = "Europe/Paris"
# can be useful in development, but set to False when you're ready to publish
RELATIVE_URLS = True
GITHUB_URL = "http://github.com/ametaireau/"
DISQUS_SITENAME = "blog-notmyidea"
REVERSE_CATEGORY_ORDER = True
LOCALE = "C"
DEFAULT_PAGINATION = 4
DEFAULT_DATE = (2012, 3, 2, 14, 1, 1)
FEED_ALL_RSS = "feeds/all.rss.xml"
CATEGORY_FEED_RSS = "feeds/{slug}.rss.xml"
LINKS = (
("Biologeek", "http://biologeek.org"),
("Filyb", "http://filyb.info/"),
("Libert-fr", "http://www.libert-fr.com"),
("N1k0", "http://prendreuncafe.com/blog/"),
("Tarek Ziade", "http://ziade.org/blog"),
("Zubin Mithra", "http://zubin71.wordpress.com/"),
)
SOCIAL = (
("twitter", "http://twitter.com/ametaireau"),
("lastfm", "http://lastfm.com/user/akounet"),
("github", "http://github.com/ametaireau"),
)
# global metadata to all the contents
DEFAULT_METADATA = {"yeah": "it is"}
# path-specific metadata
EXTRA_PATH_METADATA = {
"extra/robots.txt": {"path": "robots.txt"},
}
# static paths will be copied without parsing their contents
STATIC_PATHS = [
"images",
"extra/robots.txt",
]
# custom page generated with a jinja2 template
TEMPLATE_PAGES = {"pages/jinja2_template.html": "jinja2_template.html"}
# there is no other HTML content
READERS = {"html": None}
# code blocks with line numbers
PYGMENTS_RST_OPTIONS = {"linenos": "table"}
# foobar will not be used, because it's not in caps. All configuration keys
# have to be in caps
foobar = "barbaz"
Plugins
Beginning with version 3.0, Pelican supports plugins. Plugins are a way
to add features to Pelican without having to directly modify the
Pelican core.
How to use plugins
Starting with version 4.5, Pelican moved to a new plugin structure
utilizing namespace packages that can be easily installed via Pip
<https://pip.pypa.io/>. Plugins supporting this structure will install
under the namespace package pelican.plugins and can be automatically
discovered by Pelican. To see a list of Pip-installed namespace plugins
that are active in your environment, run:
pelican-plugins
If you leave the PLUGINS setting as default (None), Pelican will
automatically discover namespace plugins and register them. If, on the
other hand, you specify a PLUGINS setting as a list of plugins, this
auto-discovery will be disabled. At that point, only the plugins you
specify will be registered, and you must explicitly list any namespace
plugins as well.
If you are using the PLUGINS setting, you can specify plugins in two
ways. The first method specifies plugins as a list of strings.
Namespace plugins can be specified either by their full names
(pelican.plugins.myplugin) or by their short names (myplugin):
PLUGINS = ['package.myplugin',
'namespace_plugin1',
'pelican.plugins.namespace_plugin2']
Alternatively, you can import them in your settings file and pass the
modules:
from package import myplugin
from pelican.plugins import namespace_plugin1, namespace_plugin2
PLUGINS = [myplugin, namespace_plugin1, namespace_plugin2]
Note:
When experimenting with different plugins (especially the ones that
deal with metadata and content) caching may interfere and the
changes may not be visible. In such cases disable caching with
LOAD_CONTENT_CACHE = False or use the --ignore-cache command-line
switch.
If your plugins are not in an importable path, you can specify a list
of paths via the PLUGIN_PATHS setting. As shown in the following
example, paths in the PLUGIN_PATHS list can be absolute or relative to
the settings file:
PLUGIN_PATHS = ["plugins", "/srv/pelican/plugins"]
PLUGINS = ["assets", "liquid_tags", "sitemap"]
Where to find plugins
Namespace plugins can be found in the pelican-plugins organization
<https://github.com/pelican-plugins> as individual repositories. Legacy
plugins are located in the pelican-plugins repository <https://github
.com/getpelican/pelican-plugins> and will be gradually phased out in
favor of the namespace versions.
Please note that while we do our best to review and maintain these
plugins, they are submitted by the Pelican community and thus may have
varying levels of support and interoperability.
How to create plugins
Plugins are based on the concept of signals. Pelican sends signals, and
plugins subscribe to those signals. The list of available signals is
documented in a subsequent section.
The only rule to follow for plugins is to define a register callable,
in which you map the signals to your plugin logic. Let's take a simple
example:
import logging
from pelican import signals
log = logging.getLogger(__name__)
def test(sender):
log.debug("%s initialized !!", sender)
def register():
signals.initialized.connect(test)
Note:
Signal receivers are weakly-referenced and thus must not be defined
within your register callable or they will be garbage-collected
before the signal is emitted.
If multiple plugins connect to the same signal, plugins will be invoked
in the order they are registered. When the PLUGINS setting is defined,
plugin invocation order will be the order in which the plugins are
listed in the PLUGINS setting. If you rely on auto-discovered namespace
plugins and have no PLUGINS setting defined, plugins will be invoked in
the same order that they are discovered (the same order as listed in
the output of the pelican-plugins command). If you want to specify the
order explicitly, disable auto-discovery by defining PLUGINS in the
desired order.
Namespace plugin structure
Namespace plugins must adhere to a certain structure in order to
function properly. They need to be installable (i.e. contain setup.py
or equivalent) and have a folder structure as follows:
myplugin
<?><?><?> pelican
| <?><?><?> plugins
| <?><?><?> myplugin
| <?><?><?> __init__.py
| <?><?><?> ...
<?><?><?> ...
<?><?><?> setup.py
It is crucial that pelican or pelican/plugins folder not contain an
__init__.py file. In fact, it is best to have those folders empty
besides the listed folders in the above structure and keep your plugin
related files contained solely in the pelican/plugins/myplugin folder
to avoid any issues.
To easily set up the proper structure, a cookiecutter template for
plugins <https://github.com/getpelican/cookiecutter-pelican-plugin> is
provided. Refer to that project's README for instructions on how to use
it.
List of signals
Here is the list of currently implemented signals:
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|Signal | Arguments | Description |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|initialized | pelican object | |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|finalized | pelican object | invoked after all the generators |
| | | are executed and just before |
| | | pelican exits useful for custom |
| | | post processing actions, such as: - |
| | | minifying js/css assets. - |
| | | notify/ping search engines with an |
| | | updated sitemap. |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|generator_init | generator | invoked in the Generator.__init__ |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|all_generators_finalized | generators | invoked after all the generators |
| | | are executed and before writing |
| | | output |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|readers_init | readers | invoked in the Readers.__init__ |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|article_generator_context | article_generator, | |
| | metadata | |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|article_generator_preread | article_generator | invoked before a article is read in |
| | | ArticlesGenerator.generate_context; |
| | | use if code needs to do something |
| | | before every article is parsed |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|article_generator_init | article_generator | invoked in the |
| | | ArticlesGenerator.__init__ |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|article_generator_pretaxonomy | article_generator | invoked before categories and tags |
| | | lists are created useful when e.g. |
| | | modifying the list of articles to |
| | | be generated so that removed |
| | | articles are not leaked in |
| | | categories or tags |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|article_generator_finalized | article_generator | invoked at the end of |
| | | ArticlesGenerator.generate_context |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|article_generator_write_article | article_generator, | invoked before writing each |
| | content | article, the article is passed as |
| | | content |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|article_writer_finalized | article_generator, | invoked after all articles and |
| | writer | related pages have been written, |
| | | but before the article generator is |
| | | closed. |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|get_generators | pelican object | invoked in |
| | | Pelican.get_generator_classes, can |
| | | return a Generator, or several |
| | | generators in a tuple or in a list. |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|get_writer | pelican object | invoked in Pelican.get_writer, can |
| | | return a custom Writer. |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|page_generator_context | page_generator, | |
| | metadata | |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|page_generator_preread | page_generator | invoked before a page is read in |
| | | PageGenerator.generate_context; use |
| | | if code needs to do something |
| | | before every page is parsed. |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|page_generator_init | page_generator | invoked in the |
| | | PagesGenerator.__init__ |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|page_generator_finalized | page_generator | invoked at the end of |
| | | PagesGenerator.generate_context |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|page_generator_write_page | page_generator, | invoked before writing each page, |
| | content | the page is passed as content |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|page_writer_finalized | page_generator, | invoked after all pages have been |
| | writer | written, but before the page |
| | | generator is closed. |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|static_generator_context | static_generator, | |
| | metadata | |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|static_generator_preread | static_generator | invoked before a static file is |
| | | read in |
| | | StaticGenerator.generate_context; |
| | | use if code needs to do something |
| | | before every static file is added |
| | | to the staticfiles list. |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|static_generator_init | static_generator | invoked in the |
| | | StaticGenerator.__init__ |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|static_generator_finalized | static_generator | invoked at the end of |
| | | StaticGenerator.generate_context |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|content_object_init | content_object | invoked at the end of |
| | | Content.__init__ |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|content_written | path, context | invoked each time a content file is |
| | | written. |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|feed_generated | context, feed | invoked each time a feed gets |
| | | generated. Can be used to modify a |
| | | feed object before it gets written. |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
|feed_written | path, context, feed | invoked each time a feed file is |
| | | written. |
+--------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
Warning:
Avoid content_object_init signal if you intend to read summary or
content properties of the content object. That combination can
result in unresolved links when Linking to internal content <#ref-
linking-to-internal-content> (see pelican-plugins bug #314 <https://
github.com/getpelican/pelican-plugins/issues/314>). Use _summary and
_content properties instead, or, alternatively, run your plugin at a
later stage (e.g. all_generators_finalized).
Note:
After Pelican 3.2, signal names were standardized. Older plugins
may need to be updated to use the new names:
+---------------------------+-----------------------------+
|Old name | New name |
+---------------------------+-----------------------------+
|article_generate_context | article_generator_context |
+---------------------------+-----------------------------+
|article_generate_finalized | article_generator_finalized |
+---------------------------+-----------------------------+
|article_generate_preread | article_generator_preread |
+---------------------------+-----------------------------+
|pages_generate_context | page_generator_context |
+---------------------------+-----------------------------+
|pages_generate_preread | page_generator_preread |
+---------------------------+-----------------------------+
|pages_generator_finalized | page_generator_finalized |
+---------------------------+-----------------------------+
|pages_generator_init | page_generator_init |
+---------------------------+-----------------------------+
|static_generate_context | static_generator_context |
+---------------------------+-----------------------------+
|static_generate_preread | static_generator_preread |
+---------------------------+-----------------------------+
Recipes
We eventually realised some of the recipes to create plugins would be
best shared in the documentation somewhere, so here they are!
How to create a new reader
One thing you might want is to add support for your very own input
format. While it might make sense to add this feature in Pelican core,
we wisely chose to avoid this situation and instead have the different
readers defined via plugins.
The rationale behind this choice is mainly that plugins are really easy
to write and don't slow down Pelican itself when they're not active.
No more talking -- here is an example:
from pelican import signals
from pelican.readers import BaseReader
# Create a new reader class, inheriting from the pelican.reader.BaseReader
class NewReader(BaseReader):
enabled = True # Yeah, you probably want that :-)
# The list of file extensions you want this reader to match with.
# If multiple readers were to use the same extension, the latest will
# win (so the one you're defining here, most probably).
file_extensions = ['yeah']
# You need to have a read method, which takes a filename and returns
# some content and the associated metadata.
def read(self, filename):
metadata = {'title': 'Oh yeah',
'category': 'Foo',
'date': '2012-12-01'}
parsed = {}
for key, value in metadata.items():
parsed[key] = self.process_metadata(key, value)
return "Some content", parsed
def add_reader(readers):
readers.reader_classes['yeah'] = NewReader
# This is how pelican works.
def register():
signals.readers_init.connect(add_reader)
Adding a new generator
Adding a new generator is also really easy. You might want to have a
look at Pelican internals <> for more information on how to create your
own generator.
def get_generators(pelican_object):
# define a new generator here if you need to
return MyGenerator
def register():
signals.get_generators.connect(get_generators)
Adding a new writer
Adding a writer will allow you to output additional file formats to
disk, or change how the existing formats are written to disk. Note that
only one writer will be active at a time, so be sure to either subclass
the built-in Writer, or completely re-implement it.
Here is a basic example of how to set up your own writer:
from pelican.writers import Writer
from pelican import signals
class MyWriter(Writer):
# define new writer functionality
pass
def add_writer(pelican_object):
# use pelican_instance to setup stuff if needed
return MyWriter
def register():
signals.get_writer.connect(add_writer)
Using Plugins to Inject Content
You can programmatically inject articles or pages using plugins. This
can be useful if you plan to fetch articles from an API, for example.
Following is a simple example of how one can build a plugin that
injects a custom article, using the article_generator_pretaxonomy
signal:
import datetime
from pelican import signals
from pelican.contents import Article
from pelican.readers import BaseReader
def addArticle(articleGenerator):
settings = articleGenerator.settings
# Author, category, and tags are objects, not strings, so they need to
# be handled using BaseReader's process_metadata() function.
baseReader = BaseReader(settings)
content = "I am the body of an injected article!"
newArticle = Article(content, {
"title": "Injected Article!",
"date": datetime.datetime.now(),
"category": baseReader.process_metadata("category", "fromAPI"),
"tags": baseReader.process_metadata("tags", "tagA, tagB")
})
articleGenerator.articles.insert(0, newArticle)
def register():
signals.article_generator_pretaxonomy.connect(addArticle)
Themes
There is a community-managed repository of Pelican Themes <https://
github.com/getpelican/pelican-themes> for people to share and use.
Please note that while we do our best to review and merge theme
contributions, they are submitted by the Pelican community and thus may
have varying levels of support and interoperability.
Creating Themes
To generate its HTML output, Pelican uses the Jinja <https://
palletsprojects.com/p/jinja/> templating engine due to its flexibility
and straightforward syntax. If you want to create your own theme, feel
free to take inspiration from the "simple" theme <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican/tree/main/pelican/themes/simple/templates>.
To generate your site using a theme you have created (or downloaded
manually and then modified), you can specify that theme via the -t
flag:
pelican content -s pelicanconf.py -t /projects/your-site/themes/your-theme
If you'd rather not specify the theme on every invocation, you can
define THEME in your settings to point to the location of your
preferred theme.
Structure
To make your own theme, you must follow the following structure:
<?><?><?> static
| <?><?><?> css
| <?><?><?> images
<?><?><?> templates
<?><?><?> archives.html // to display archives
<?><?><?> article.html // processed for each article
<?><?><?> author.html // processed for each author
<?><?><?> authors.html // must list all the authors
<?><?><?> categories.html // must list all the categories
<?><?><?> category.html // processed for each category
<?><?><?> index.html // the index (list all the articles)
<?><?><?> page.html // processed for each page
<?><?><?> period_archives.html // to display time-period archives
<?><?><?> tag.html // processed for each tag
<?><?><?> tags.html // must list all the tags. Can be a tag cloud.
o static contains all the static assets, which will be copied to the
output theme folder. The above filesystem layout includes CSS and
image folders, but those are just examples. Put what you need here.
o templates contains all the templates that will be used to generate
the content. The template files listed above are mandatory; you can
add your own templates if it helps you keep things organized while
creating your theme.
Templates and Variables
The idea is to use a simple syntax that you can embed into your HTML
pages. This document describes which templates should exist in a
theme, and which variables will be passed to each template at
generation time.
All templates will receive the variables defined in your settings file,
as long as they are in all-caps. You can access them directly.
Common Variables
All of these settings will be available to all templates.
+----------------+----------------------------+
|Variable | Description |
+----------------+----------------------------+
|output_file | The name of the file |
| | currently being generated. |
| | For instance, when Pelican |
| | is rendering the home |
| | page, output_file will be |
| | "index.html". |
+----------------+----------------------------+
|articles | The list of articles, |
| | ordered descending by |
| | date. All the elements are |
| | Article objects, so you |
| | can access their |
| | attributes (e.g. title, |
| | summary, author etc.). |
| | Sometimes this is shadowed |
| | (for instance, in the tags |
| | page). You will then find |
| | info about it in the |
| | all_articles variable. |
+----------------+----------------------------+
|dates | The same list of articles, |
| | but ordered by date, |
| | ascending. |
+----------------+----------------------------+
|hidden_articles | The list of hidden |
| | articles |
+----------------+----------------------------+
|drafts | The list of draft articles |
+----------------+----------------------------+
|period_archives | A dictionary containing |
| | elements related to |
| | time-period archives (if |
| | enabled). See the section |
| | Listing and Linking to |
| | Period Archives for |
| | details. |
+----------------+----------------------------+
|authors | A list of (author, |
| | articles) tuples, |
| | containing all the authors |
| | and corresponding articles |
| | (values) |
+----------------+----------------------------+
|categories | A list of (category, |
| | articles) tuples, |
| | containing all the |
| | categories and |
| | corresponding articles |
| | (values) |
+----------------+----------------------------+
|tags | A list of (tag, articles) |
| | tuples, containing all the |
| | tags and corresponding |
| | articles (values) |
+----------------+----------------------------+
|pages | The list of pages |
+----------------+----------------------------+
|hidden_pages | The list of hidden pages |
+----------------+----------------------------+
|draft_pages | The list of draft pages |
+----------------+----------------------------+
Sorting
URL wrappers (currently categories, tags, and authors), have comparison
methods that allow them to be easily sorted by name:
{% for tag, articles in tags|sort %}
If you want to sort based on different criteria, Jinja's sort command
<https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/en/latest/templates/#sort> has a
number of options.
Date Formatting
Pelican formats the date according to your settings and locale
(DATE_FORMATS/DEFAULT_DATE_FORMAT) and provides a locale_date
attribute. On the other hand, the date attribute will be a datetime
<https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#datetime-objects>
object. If you need custom formatting for a date different than your
settings, use the Jinja filter strftime that comes with Pelican. Usage
is same as Python strftime <https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime
.html#strftime-strptime-behavior> format, but the filter will do the
right thing and format your date according to the locale given in your
settings:
{{ article.date|strftime('%d %B %Y') }}
Checking Loaded Plugins
Pelican provides a plugin_enabled Jinja test for checking if a certain
plugin is enabled. This test accepts a plugin name as a string and will
return a Boolean. Namespace plugins can be specified by full name
(pelican.plugins.plugin_name) or short name (plugin_name). The
following example uses the webassets plugin to minify CSS if the plugin
is enabled and otherwise falls back to regular CSS:
{% if "webassets" is plugin_enabled %}
{% assets filters="cssmin", output="css/style.min.css", "css/style.scss" %}
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{SITEURL}}/{{ASSET_URL}}">
{% endassets %}
{% else %}
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{SITEURL}}/css/style.css}">
{% endif %}
index.html
This is the home page or index of your blog, generated at index.html.
If pagination is active, subsequent pages will reside in
index{number}.html.
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|Variable | Description |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_paginator | A paginator object for the |
| | list of articles |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_page | The current page of |
| | articles |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_previous_page | The previous page of |
| | articles (None if page |
| | does not exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_next_page | The next page of articles |
| | (None if page does not |
| | exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_paginator | A paginator object for the |
| | article list, ordered by |
| | date, ascending. |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_page | The current page of |
| | articles, ordered by date, |
| | ascending. |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_previous_page | The previous page of |
| | articles, ordered by date, |
| | ascending (None if page |
| | does not exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_next_page | The next page of articles, |
| | ordered by date, ascending |
| | (None if page does not |
| | exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|page_name | 'index' -- useful for |
| | pagination links |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
author.html
This template will be processed for each of the existing authors, with
output generated according to the AUTHOR_SAVE_AS setting (Default:
author/{slug}.html). If pagination is active, subsequent pages will by
default reside at author/{slug}{number}.html.
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|Variable | Description |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|author | The name of the author |
| | being processed |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles | Articles by this author |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates | Articles by this author, |
| | but ordered by date, |
| | ascending |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_paginator | A paginator object for the |
| | list of articles |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_page | The current page of |
| | articles |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_previous_page | The previous page of |
| | articles (None if page |
| | does not exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_next_page | The next page of articles |
| | (None if page does not |
| | exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_paginator | A paginator object for the |
| | article list, ordered by |
| | date, ascending. |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_page | The current page of |
| | articles, ordered by date, |
| | ascending. |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_previous_page | The previous page of |
| | articles, ordered by date, |
| | ascending (None if page |
| | does not exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_next_page | The next page of articles, |
| | ordered by date, ascending |
| | (None if page does not |
| | exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|page_name | AUTHOR_URL where |
| | everything after {slug} is |
| | removed -- useful for |
| | pagination links |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
category.html
This template will be processed for each of the existing categories,
with output generated according to the CATEGORY_SAVE_AS setting
(Default: category/{slug}.html). If pagination is active, subsequent
pages will by default reside at category/{slug}{number}.html.
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|Variable | Description |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|category | The name of the category |
| | being processed |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles | Articles for this category |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates | Articles for this |
| | category, but ordered by |
| | date, ascending |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_paginator | A paginator object for the |
| | list of articles |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_page | The current page of |
| | articles |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_previous_page | The previous page of |
| | articles (None if page |
| | does not exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_next_page | The next page of articles |
| | (None if page does not |
| | exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_paginator | A paginator object for the |
| | list of articles, ordered |
| | by date, ascending |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_page | The current page of |
| | articles, ordered by date, |
| | ascending |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_previous_page | The previous page of |
| | articles, ordered by date, |
| | ascending (None if page |
| | does not exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_next_page | The next page of articles, |
| | ordered by date, ascending |
| | (None if page does not |
| | exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|page_name | CATEGORY_URL where |
| | everything after {slug} is |
| | removed -- useful for |
| | pagination links |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
article.html
This template will be processed for each article, with output generated
according to the ARTICLE_SAVE_AS setting (Default: {slug}.html). The
following variables are available when rendering.
+---------+--------------------------+
|Variable | Description |
+---------+--------------------------+
|article | The article object to be |
| | displayed |
+---------+--------------------------+
|category | The name of the category |
| | for the current article |
+---------+--------------------------+
Any metadata that you put in the header of the article source file will
be available as fields on the article object. The field name will be
the same as the name of the metadata field, except in all-lowercase
characters.
For example, you could add a field called FacebookImage to your article
metadata, as shown below:
Title: I love Python more than music
Date: 2013-11-06 10:06
Tags: personal, python
Category: Tech
Slug: python-je-l-aime-a-mourir
Author: Francis Cabrel
FacebookImage: http://franciscabrel.com/images/pythonlove.png
This new metadata will be made available as article.facebookimage in
your article.html template. This would allow you, for example, to
specify an image for the Facebook open graph tags that will change for
each article:
<meta property="og:image" content="{{ article.facebookimage }}"/>
page.html
This template will be processed for each page, with output generated
according to the PAGE_SAVE_AS setting (Default: pages/{slug}.html). The
following variables are available when rendering.
+---------+---------------------------+
|Variable | Description |
+---------+---------------------------+
|page | The page object to be |
| | displayed. You can access |
| | its title, slug, and |
| | content. |
+---------+---------------------------+
tag.html
This template will be processed for each tag, with output generated
according to the TAG_SAVE_AS setting (Default: tag/{slug}.html). If
pagination is active, subsequent pages will by default reside at
tag/{slug}{number}.html.
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|Variable | Description |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|tag | The name of the tag being |
| | processed |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles | Articles related to this |
| | tag |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates | Articles related to this |
| | tag, but ordered by date, |
| | ascending |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_paginator | A paginator object for the |
| | list of articles |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_page | The current page of |
| | articles |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_previous_page | The previous page of |
| | articles (None if page |
| | does not exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|articles_next_page | The next page of articles |
| | (None if page does not |
| | exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_paginator | A paginator object for the |
| | list of articles, ordered |
| | by date, ascending |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_page | The current page of |
| | articles, ordered by date, |
| | ascending |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_previous_page | The previous page of |
| | articles, ordered by date, |
| | ascending (None if page |
| | does not exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|dates_next_page | The next page of articles, |
| | ordered by date, ascending |
| | (None if page does not |
| | exist) |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
|page_name | TAG_URL where everything |
| | after {slug} is removed -- |
| | useful for pagination |
| | links |
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
period_archives.html
This template will be processed for each year of your posts if a path
for YEAR_ARCHIVE_SAVE_AS is defined, each month if
MONTH_ARCHIVE_SAVE_AS is defined, and each day if DAY_ARCHIVE_SAVE_AS
is defined.
+-----------+----------------------------+
|Variable | Description |
+-----------+----------------------------+
|period | A tuple of the form (year, |
| | month, day) that indicates |
| | the current time period. |
| | year and day are numbers |
| | while month is a string. |
| | This tuple only contains |
| | year if the time period is |
| | a given year. It contains |
| | both year and month if the |
| | time period is over years |
| | and months and so on. |
+-----------+----------------------------+
|period_num | A tuple of the form (year, |
| | month, day), as in period, |
| | except all values are |
| | numbers. |
+-----------+----------------------------+
You can see an example of how to use period in the "simple" theme
period_archives.html template <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/
blob/main/pelican/themes/simple/templates/period_archives.html>.
Listing and Linking to Period Archives
The period_archives variable can be used to generate a list of links to
the set of period archives that Pelican generates. As a common
variable, it is available for use in any template, so you can implement
such an index in a custom direct template, or in a sidebar visible
across different site pages.
period_archives is a dict that may contain year, month, and/or day
keys, depending on which *_ARCHIVE_SAVE_AS settings are enabled. The
corresponding value is a list of dicts, where each dict in turn
represents a time period (ordered according to the
NEWEST_FIRST_ARCHIVES setting) with the following keys and values:
+-----------+------------------------------+
|Key | Value |
+-----------+------------------------------+
|period | The same tuple as described |
| | in period_archives.html, |
| | e.g. (2023, 'June', 18). |
+-----------+------------------------------+
|period_num | The same tuple as described |
| | in period_archives.html, |
| | e.g. (2023, 6, 18). |
+-----------+------------------------------+
|url | The URL to the period |
| | archive page, e.g. |
| | posts/2023/06/18/. This is |
| | controlled by the |
| | corresponding *_ARCHIVE_URL |
| | setting. |
+-----------+------------------------------+
|save_as | The path to the save |
| | location of the period |
| | archive page file, e.g. |
| | posts/2023/06/18/index.html. |
| | This is used internally by |
| | Pelican and is usually not |
| | relevant to themes. |
+-----------+------------------------------+
|articles | A list of Article objects |
| | that fall under the time |
| | period. |
+-----------+------------------------------+
|dates | Same list as articles, but |
| | ordered according to the |
| | NEWEST_FIRST_ARCHIVES |
| | setting. |
+-----------+------------------------------+
Here is an example of how period_archives can be used in a template:
<ul>
{% for archive in period_archives.month %}
<li>
<a href="{{ SITEURL }}/{{ archive.url }}">
{{ archive.period | reverse | join(' ') }} ({{ archive.articles|count }})
</a>
</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
You can change period_archives.month in the for statement to
period_archives.year or period_archives.day as appropriate, depending
on the time period granularity desired.
Objects
Detail objects attributes that are available and useful in templates.
Not all attributes are listed here, this is a selection of attributes
considered useful in a template.
Article
The string representation of an Article is the source_path attribute.
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|Attribute | Description |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|author | The Author of this |
| | article. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|authors | A list of Authors of this |
| | article. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|category | The Category of this |
| | article. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|content | The rendered content of |
| | the article. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|date | Datetime object |
| | representing the article |
| | date. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|date_format | Either default date format |
| | or locale date format. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|default_template | Default template name. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|in_default_lang | Boolean representing if |
| | the article is written in |
| | the default language. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|lang | Language of the article. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|locale_date | Date formatted by the |
| | date_format. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|metadata | Article header metadata |
| | dict. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|save_as | Location to save the |
| | article page. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|slug | Page slug. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|source_path | Full system path of the |
| | article source file. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|relative_source_path | Relative path from PATH |
| | <settings.html#PATH> to |
| | the article source file. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|status | The article status, can be |
| | any of 'published' or |
| | 'draft'. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|summary | Rendered summary content. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|tags | List of Tag objects. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|template | Template name to use for |
| | rendering. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|title | Title of the article. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|translations | List of translations |
| | Article objects. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|url | URL to the article page. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
Author / Category / Tag
The string representation of those objects is the name attribute.
+----------+--------------------------+
|Attribute | Description |
+----------+--------------------------+
|name | Name of this object [1]. |
+----------+--------------------------+
|page_name | Author page name. |
+----------+--------------------------+
|save_as | Location to save the |
| | author page. |
+----------+--------------------------+
|slug | Page slug. |
+----------+--------------------------+
|url | URL to the author page. |
+----------+--------------------------+
[1] for Author object, coming from :authors: or AUTHOR.
Page
The string representation of a Page is the source_path attribute.
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|Attribute | Description |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|author | The Author of this page. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|content | The rendered content of |
| | the page. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|date | Datetime object |
| | representing the page |
| | date. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|date_format | Either default date format |
| | or locale date format. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|default_template | Default template name. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|in_default_lang | Boolean representing if |
| | the article is written in |
| | the default language. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|lang | Language of the article. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|locale_date | Date formatted by the |
| | date_format. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|metadata | Page header metadata dict. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|save_as | Location to save the page. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|slug | Page slug. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|source_path | Full system path of the |
| | page source file. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|relative_source_path | Relative path from PATH |
| | <settings.html#PATH> to |
| | the page source file. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|status | The page status, can be |
| | any of 'published', |
| | 'hidden' or 'draft'. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|summary | Rendered summary content. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|tags | List of Tag objects. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|template | Template name to use for |
| | rendering. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|title | Title of the page. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|translations | List of translations |
| | Article objects. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
|url | URL to the page. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+
Feeds
The feed variables changed in 3.0. Each variable now explicitly lists
ATOM or RSS in the name. ATOM is still the default. Old themes will
need to be updated. Here is a complete list of the feed variables:
AUTHOR_FEED_ATOM
AUTHOR_FEED_RSS
CATEGORY_FEED_ATOM
CATEGORY_FEED_RSS
FEED_ALL_ATOM
FEED_ALL_RSS
FEED_ATOM
FEED_RSS
TAG_FEED_ATOM
TAG_FEED_RSS
TRANSLATION_FEED_ATOM
TRANSLATION_FEED_RSS
Inheritance
Since version 3.0, Pelican supports inheritance from the simple theme,
so you can re-use the simple theme templates in your own themes.
If one of the mandatory files in the templates/ directory of your theme
is missing, it will be replaced by the matching template from the
simple theme. So if the HTML structure of a template in the simple
theme is right for you, you don't have to write a new template from
scratch.
You can also extend templates from the simple theme in your own themes
by using the {% extends %} directive as in the following example:
{% extends "!simple/index.html" %} <!-- extends the ``index.html`` template from the ``simple`` theme -->
{% extends "index.html" %} <!-- "regular" extending -->
Example
With this system, it is possible to create a theme with just two files.
base.html
The first file is the templates/base.html template:
{% extends "!simple/base.html" %}
{% block head %}
{{ super() }}
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{{ SITEURL }}/theme/css/style.css" />
{% endblock %}
1. On the first line, we extend the base.html template from the simple
theme, so we don't have to rewrite the entire file.
2. On the third line, we open the head block which has already been
defined in the simple theme.
3. On the fourth line, the function super() keeps the content
previously inserted in the head block.
4. On the fifth line, we append a stylesheet to the page.
5. On the last line, we close the head block.
This file will be extended by all the other templates, so the
stylesheet will be linked from all pages.
style.css
The second file is the static/css/style.css CSS stylesheet:
body {
font-family : monospace ;
font-size : 100% ;
background-color : white ;
color : #111 ;
width : 80% ;
min-width : 400px ;
min-height : 200px ;
padding : 1em ;
margin : 5% 10% ;
border : thin solid gray ;
border-radius : 5px ;
display : block ;
}
a:link { color : blue ; text-decoration : none ; }
a:hover { color : blue ; text-decoration : underline ; }
a:visited { color : blue ; }
h1 a { color : inherit !important }
h2 a { color : inherit !important }
h3 a { color : inherit !important }
h4 a { color : inherit !important }
h5 a { color : inherit !important }
h6 a { color : inherit !important }
pre {
margin : 2em 1em 2em 4em ;
}
#menu li {
display : inline ;
}
#post-list {
margin-bottom : 1em ;
margin-top : 1em ;
}
Download
You can download this example theme here.
pelican-themes
Description
pelican-themes is a command line tool for managing themes for Pelican.
See Themes <#settings-themes> for settings related to themes.
Usage
pelican-themes [-h] [-l] [-i theme path [theme path ...]]
[-r theme name [theme name ...]]
[-s theme path [theme path ...]] [-v] [--version]
Optional arguments:
-h, --help
Show the help and exit
-l, --list
Show the themes already installed
-i theme_path, --install theme_path
One or more themes to install
-r theme_name, --remove theme_name
One or more themes to remove
-s theme_path, --symlink theme_path
Same as --install, but create a symbolic link instead of copying
the theme. Useful for theme development
-v, --verbose
Verbose output
--version
Print the version of this script
Examples
Listing the installed themes
With pelican-themes, you can see the available themes by using the -l
or --list option:
$ pelican-themes -l
notmyidea
two-column@
simple
$ pelican-themes --list
notmyidea
two-column@
simple
In this example, we can see there are three themes available:
notmyidea, simple, and two-column.
two-column is followed by an @ because this theme is not copied to the
Pelican theme path, but is instead just linked to it (see Creating
symbolic links for details about creating symbolic links).
Note that you can combine the --list option with the -v or --verbose
option to get more verbose output, like this:
$ pelican-themes -v -l
/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/pelican-2.6.0-py2.6.egg/pelican/themes/notmyidea
/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/pelican-2.6.0-py2.6.egg/pelican/themes/two-column (symbolic link to `/home/skami/Dev/Python/pelican-themes/two-column')
/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/pelican-2.6.0-py2.6.egg/pelican/themes/simple
Installing themes
You can install one or more themes using the -i or --install option.
This option takes as argument the path(s) of the theme(s) you want to
install, and can be combined with the --verbose option:
# pelican-themes --install ~/Dev/Python/pelican-themes/notmyidea-cms --verbose
# pelican-themes --install ~/Dev/Python/pelican-themes/notmyidea-cms\
~/Dev/Python/pelican-themes/martyalchin \
--verbose
# pelican-themes -vi ~/Dev/Python/pelican-themes/two-column
Removing themes
The pelican-themes command can also remove themes from the Pelican
themes path. The -r or --remove option takes as argument the name(s) of
the theme(s) you want to remove, and can be combined with the --verbose
option.
# pelican-themes --remove two-column
# pelican-themes -r martyachin notmyidea-cmd -v
Creating symbolic links
pelican-themes can also install themes by creating symbolic links
instead of copying entire themes into the Pelican themes path.
To symbolically link a theme, you can use the -s or --symlink, which
works exactly as the --install option:
# pelican-themes --symlink ~/Dev/Python/pelican-themes/two-column
In this example, the two-column theme is now symbolically linked to the
Pelican themes path, so we can use it, but we can also modify it
without having to reinstall it after each modification.
This is useful for theme development:
$ sudo pelican-themes -s ~/Dev/Python/pelican-themes/two-column
$ pelican ~/Blog/content -o /tmp/out -t two-column
$ firefox /tmp/out/index.html
$ vim ~/Dev/Pelican/pelican-themes/two-column/static/css/main.css
$ pelican ~/Blog/content -o /tmp/out -t two-column
$ cp /tmp/bg.png ~/Dev/Pelican/pelican-themes/two-column/static/img/bg.png
$ pelican ~/Blog/content -o /tmp/out -t two-column
$ vim ~/Dev/Pelican/pelican-themes/two-column/templates/index.html
$ pelican ~/Blog/content -o /tmp/out -t two-column
Doing several things at once
The --install, --remove and --symlink options are not mutually
exclusive, so you can combine them in the same command line to do more
than one operation at time, like this:
# pelican-themes --remove notmyidea-cms two-column \
--install ~/Dev/Python/pelican-themes/notmyidea-cms-fr \
--symlink ~/Dev/Python/pelican-themes/two-column \
--verbose
In this example, the theme notmyidea-cms is replaced by the theme
notmyidea-cms-fr
Importing an existing site
Description
pelican-import is a command-line tool for converting articles from
other software to reStructuredText or Markdown. The supported import
formats are:
o Blogger XML export
o Dotclear export
o Medium export
o Tumblr API
o WordPress XML export
o RSS/Atom feed
The conversion from HTML to reStructuredText or Markdown relies on
Pandoc <https://pandoc.org/>. For Dotclear, if the source posts are
written with Markdown syntax, they will not be converted (as Pelican
also supports Markdown).
Note:
Unlike Pelican, Wordpress supports multiple categories per article.
These are imported as a comma-separated string. You have to resolve
these manually, or use a plugin such as More Categories <https://
github.com/pelican-plugins/more-categories> that enables multiple
categories per article.
Note:
Imported pages may contain links to images that still point to the
original site. So you might want to download those images into your
local content and manually re-link them from the relevant pages of
your site.
Dependencies
pelican-import has some dependencies not required by the rest of
Pelican:
o BeautifulSoup4 and lxml, for WordPress and Dotclear import. Can be
installed like any other Python package (pip install BeautifulSoup4
lxml).
o Feedparser, for feed import (pip install feedparser).
o Pandoc, see the Pandoc site <https://pandoc.org/installing.html> for
installation instructions on your operating system.
Usage
pelican-import [-h] [--blogger] [--dotclear] [--tumblr] [--wpfile] [--feed]
[-o OUTPUT] [-m MARKUP] [--dir-cat] [--dir-page] [--strip-raw] [--wp-custpost]
[--wp-attach] [--disable-slugs] [-b BLOGNAME]
input|api_key
Positional arguments
+--------+-------------------------------------+
|input | The input file to read |
+--------+-------------------------------------+
|api_key | (Tumblr only) api_key can be |
| | obtained from <https://www.tumblr |
| | .com/oauth/apps> |
+--------+-------------------------------------+
Optional arguments
-h, --help
Show this help message and exit
--blogger
Blogger XML export (default: False)
--dotclear
Dotclear export (default: False)
--medium
Medium export (default: False)
--tumblr
Tumblr API (default: False)
--wpfile
WordPress XML export (default: False)
--feed Feed to parse (default: False)
-o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
Output path (default: content)
-m MARKUP, --markup MARKUP
Output markup format: rst, markdown, or asciidoc (default:
rst)
--dir-cat
Put files in directories with categories name (default:
False)
--dir-page
Put files recognised as pages in "pages/" sub- directory
(blogger and wordpress import only) (default: False)
--filter-author
Import only post from the specified author
--strip-raw
Strip raw HTML code that can't be converted to markup such as
flash embeds or iframes (default: False)
--wp-custpost
Put wordpress custom post types in directories. If used with
--dir-cat option directories will be created as
"/post_type/category/" (wordpress import only)
--wp-attach
Download files uploaded to wordpress as attachments. Files
will be added to posts as a list in the post header and links
to the files within the post will be updated. All files will
be downloaded, even if they aren't associated with a post.
Files will be downloaded with their original path inside the
output directory, e.g.
"output/wp-uploads/date/postname/file.jpg". (wordpress
import only) (requires an internet connection)
--disable-slugs
Disable storing slugs from imported posts within output. With
this disabled, your Pelican URLs may not be consistent with
your original posts. (default: False)
-b BLOGNAME, --blogname=BLOGNAME
Blog name used in Tumblr API
Examples
For Blogger:
$ pelican-import --blogger -o ~/output ~/posts.xml
For Dotclear:
$ pelican-import --dotclear -o ~/output ~/backup.txt
For Medium:
$ pelican-import --medium -o ~/output ~/medium-export/posts/
The Medium export is a zip file. Unzip it, and point this tool to the
"posts" subdirectory. For more information on how to export, see
<https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004745787-Export-your-
account-data>.
For Tumblr:
$ pelican-import --tumblr -o ~/output --blogname=<blogname> <api_key>
For WordPress:
$ pelican-import --wpfile -o ~/output ~/posts.xml
For Medium (an example of using an RSS feed):
$ python -m pip install feedparser $ pelican-import --feed <https://
medium.com/feed/@username>
Note:
The RSS feed may only return the most recent posts -- not all of
them.
Tests
To test the module, one can use sample files:
o for WordPress: <https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-themes/how-to-add-
dummy-content-for-theme-development-in-wordpress/>
o for Dotclear: <http://media.dotaddict.org/tda/downloads/lorem-backup
.txt>
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Here are some frequently asked questions about Pelican.
What's the best way to communicate a problem, question, or suggestion?
Please read our feedback guidelines <>.
How can I help?
There are several ways to help out. First, you can communicate any
Pelican suggestions or problems you might have via Pelican Discussions
<https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/discussions>. Please first check
the existing list of discussions and issues (both open and closed) in
order to avoid submitting topics that have already been covered before.
If you want to contribute, please fork the Git repository <https://
github.com/getpelican/pelican/>, create a new feature branch, make your
changes, and issue a pull request. Someone will review your changes as
soon as possible. Please refer to the How to Contribute <> section for
more details.
You can also contribute by creating themes and improving the
documentation.
Is the Pelican settings file mandatory?
Configuration files are optional and are just an easy way to configure
Pelican. For basic operations, it's possible to specify options while
invoking Pelican via the command line. See pelican --help for more
information.
Changes to the settings file take no effect
When experimenting with different settings (especially the metadata
ones) caching may interfere and the changes may not be visible. In such
cases, ensure that caching is disabled via LOAD_CONTENT_CACHE = False
or use the --ignore-cache command-line switch.
I'm creating my own theme. How do I use Pygments for syntax highlighting?
Pygments adds some classes to the generated content. These classes are
used by themes to style code syntax highlighting via CSS. Specifically,
you can customize the appearance of your syntax highlighting via the
.highlight pre class in your theme's CSS file. To see how various
styles can be used to render Django code, for example, use the style
selector drop-down at top-right on the Pygments project demo site
<https://pygments.org/demo/>.
You can use the following example commands to generate a starting CSS
file from a Pygments built-in style (in this case, "monokai") and then
copy the generated CSS file to your new theme:
pygmentize -S monokai -f html -a .highlight > pygment.css
cp pygment.css path/to/theme/static/css/
Don't forget to import your pygment.css file from your main CSS file.
How do I create my own theme?
Please refer to Themes <#theming-pelican>.
Can I override individual templates without forking the whole theme?
Yes, you can override existing templates of the theme that you are
using, or add new templates, via the THEME_TEMPLATES_OVERRIDES
variable. For example, to override the page template, you can define
the location for your templates like this:
THEME_TEMPLATES_OVERRIDES = ["templates"]
You can then define a custom template in templates/page.html. See
Themes <#settings-themes> for details.
I want to use Markdown, but I got an error.
If you try to generate Markdown content without first installing the
Markdown library, you may see a message that says No valid files found
in content. Markdown is not a hard dependency for Pelican, so if you
have content in Markdown format, you will need to explicitly install
the Markdown library. You can do so by typing the following command,
prepending sudo if permissions require it:
python -m pip install markdown
Can I use arbitrary metadata in my templates?
Yes. For example, to include a modified date in a Markdown post, one
could include the following at the top of the article:
Modified: 2012-08-08
For reStructuredText, this metadata should of course be prefixed with a
colon:
:Modified: 2012-08-08
This metadata can then be accessed in templates such as article.html
via:
{% if article.modified %}
Last modified: {{ article.modified }}
{% endif %}
If you want to include metadata in templates outside the article
context (e.g., base.html), the if statement should instead be:
{% if article and article.modified %}
How do I make my output folder structure identical to my content hierarchy?
Try these settings:
USE_FOLDER_AS_CATEGORY = False
PATH_METADATA = "(?P<path_no_ext>.*)\..*"
ARTICLE_URL = ARTICLE_SAVE_AS = PAGE_URL = PAGE_SAVE_AS = "{path_no_ext}.html"
How do I assign custom templates on a per-page basis?
It's as simple as adding an extra line of metadata to any page or
article that you want to have its own template. For example, this is
how it would be handled for content in reST format:
:template: template_name
For content in Markdown format:
Template: template_name
Then just make sure your theme contains the relevant template file
(e.g. template_name.html). If you just want to add a new custom
template to an existing theme, you can also provide it in a directory
specified by THEME_TEMPLATES_OVERRIDES (see Themes <#settings-themes>).
How can I override the generated URL of a specific page or article?
Include url and save_as metadata in any pages or articles that you want
to override the generated URL. Here is an example page in reST format:
Override url/save_as page
#########################
:url: override/url/
:save_as: override/url/index.html
With this metadata, the page will be written to override/url/index.html
and Pelican will use the URL override/url/ to link to this page.
How can I use a static page as my home page?
The override feature mentioned above can be used to specify a static
page as your home page. The following Markdown example could be stored
in content/pages/home.md:
Title: Welcome to My Site
URL:
save_as: index.html
Thank you for visiting. Welcome!
If the original blog index is still wanted, it can then be saved in a
different location by setting INDEX_SAVE_AS = 'blog_index.html' for the
'index' direct template.
What if I want to disable feed generation?
To disable feed generation, all feed settings should be set to None.
All but three feed settings already default to None, so if you want to
disable all feed generation, you only need to specify the following
settings:
FEED_ALL_ATOM = None
CATEGORY_FEED_ATOM = None
TRANSLATION_FEED_ATOM = None
AUTHOR_FEED_ATOM = None
AUTHOR_FEED_RSS = None
The word None should not be surrounded by quotes. Please note that None
and '' are not the same thing.
I'm getting a warning about feeds generated without SITEURL being set
properly
RSS and Atom feeds require all URL links to be absolute <https://
validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html#comments>. In order to properly
generate links in Pelican you will need to set SITEURL to the full path
of your site.
Feeds are still generated when this warning is displayed, but links
within may be malformed and thus the feed may not validate.
Can I force Atom feeds to show only summaries instead of article content?
Instead of having to open a separate browser window to read articles,
the overwhelming majority of folks who use feed readers prefer to read
content within the feed reader itself. Mainly for that reason, Pelican
does not support restricting Atom feeds to only contain summaries.
Unlike Atom feeds, the RSS feed specification does not include a
separate content field, so by default Pelican publishes RSS feeds that
only contain summaries (but can optionally be set to instead publish
full content RSS feeds). So the default feed generation behavior
provides users with a choice: subscribe to Atom feeds for full content
or to RSS feeds for just the summaries.
Is Pelican only suitable for blogs?
No. Pelican can be easily configured to create and maintain any type of
static site. This may require a little customization of your theme and
Pelican configuration. For example, if you are building a launch site
for your product and do not need tags on your site, you could remove
the relevant HTML code from your theme. You can also disable generation
of tag-related pages via:
TAGS_SAVE_AS = ''
TAG_SAVE_AS = ''
Why does Pelican always write all HTML files even with content caching
enabled?
In order to reliably determine whether the HTML output is different
before writing it, a large part of the generation environment including
the template contexts, imported plugins, etc. would have to be saved
and compared, at least in the form of a hash (which would require
special handling of unhashable types), because of all the possible
combinations of plugins, pagination, etc. which may change in many
different ways. This would require a lot more processing time and
memory and storage space. Simply writing the files each time is a lot
faster and a lot more reliable.
However, this means that the modification time of the files changes
every time, so a rsync based upload will transfer them even if their
content hasn't changed. A simple solution is to make rsync use the
--checksum option, which will make it compare the file checksums in a
much faster way than Pelican would.
How to process only a subset of all articles?
It is often useful to process only e.g. 10 articles for debugging
purposes. This can be achieved by explicitly specifying only the
filenames of those articles in ARTICLE_PATHS. A list of such filenames
could be found using a command similar to cd content; find -name '*.md'
| head -n 10.
My tag cloud is missing/broken since I upgraded Pelican
In an ongoing effort to streamline Pelican, tag cloud generation has
been moved out of Pelican core and into a separate plugin <https://
github.com/pelican-plugins/tag-cloud>. See the Plugins <#plugins>
documentation for further information about the Pelican plugin system.
Since I upgraded Pelican my pages are no longer rendered
Pages were available to themes as lowercase pages and uppercase PAGES.
To bring this inline with the Templates and Variables <#templates-
variables> section, PAGES has been removed. This is quickly resolved by
updating your theme to iterate over pages instead of PAGES. Just
replace:
{% for pg in PAGES %}
with something like:
{% for pg in pages %}
How can I stop Pelican from trying to parse my static files as content?
Pelican's article and page generators run before it's static generator.
That means if you use a setup similar to the default configuration,
where a static source directory is defined inside a *_PATHS setting,
all files that have a valid content file ending (.html, .rst, .md, ...)
will be treated as articles or pages before they get treated as static
files.
To circumvent this issue either use the appropriate *_EXCLUDES setting
or disable the offending reader via READERS if you don't need it.
Why is [arbitrary Markdown syntax] not supported?
Pelican does not directly handle Markdown processing and instead
delegates that task to the Python-Markdown <https://github.com/Python-
Markdown/markdown> project, the core of which purposefully follows the
original Markdown syntax rules and not the myriad Markdown "flavors"
that have subsequently propagated. That said, Python-Markdown <https://
github.com/Python-Markdown/markdown> is quite modular, and the syntax
you are looking for may be provided by one of the many available
Markdown Extensions <https://python-markdown.github.io/extensions/>.
Alternatively, some folks have created Pelican plugins that support
Markdown variants, so that may be your best choice if there is a
particular variant you want to use when writing your content.
Tips
Here are some tips about Pelican that you might find useful.
Custom 404 Pages
When a browser requests a resource that the web server cannot find, the
web server usually displays a generic "File not found" (404) error page
that can be stark and unsightly. One way to provide an error page that
matches the theme of your site is to create a custom 404 page (not an
article), such as this Markdown-formatted example stored in
content/pages/404.md:
Title: Not Found
Status: hidden
Save_as: 404.html
The requested item could not be located. Perhaps you might want to check
the [Archives](/archives.html)?
The next step is to configure your web server to display this custom
page instead of its default 404 page. For Nginx, add the following to
your configuration file's location block:
error_page 404 /404.html;
For Apache:
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
For Amazon S3, first navigate to the Static Site Hosting menu in the
bucket settings on your AWS console. From there:
Error Document: 404.html
Publishing to GitHub Pages
If you use GitHub <https://github.com/> for your Pelican site you can
publish your site to GitHub Pages <https://pages.github.com/> for free.
Your site will be published to https://<username>.github.io if it's a
user or organization site or to
https://<username>.github.io/<repository> if it's a project site. It's
also possible to use a custom domain with GitHub Pages <https://docs
.github.com/en/pages/configuring-a-custom-domain-for-your-github-pages-
site>.
There are two ways to publish a site to GitHub Pages <https://docs
.github.com/en/pages/getting-started-with-github-pages/configuring-a-
publishing-source-for-your-github-pages-site>:
1. Publishing from a branch: run pelican locally and push the output
directory to a special branch of your GitHub repo. GitHub will then
publish the contents of this branch to your GitHub Pages site.
2. Publishing with a custom GitHub Actions workflow: just push the
source files of your Pelican site to your GitHub repo's default
branch and have a custom GitHub Actions workflow run pelican for you
to generate the output directory and publish it to your GitHub Pages
site. This way you don't need to run pelican locally. You can even
edit your site's source files using GitHub's web interface and any
changes that you commit will be published.
Publishing a Project Site to GitHub Pages from a Branch
To publish a Pelican site as a Project Page you need to push the
content of the output dir generated by Pelican to a repository's
gh-pages branch on GitHub.
The excellent ghp-import <https://github.com/davisp/ghp-import>, which
can be installed with pip, makes this process really easy.
For example, if the source of your Pelican site is contained in a
GitHub repository, and if you want to publish that Pelican site in the
form of Project Pages to this repository, you can then use the
following:
$ pelican content -o output -s pelicanconf.py
$ ghp-import output -b gh-pages
$ git push origin gh-pages
The ghp-import output command updates the local gh-pages branch with
the content of the output directory (creating the branch if it doesn't
already exist). The git push origin gh-pages command updates the remote
gh-pages branch, effectively publishing the Pelican site.
Note:
The github target of the Makefile (and the gh_pages task of
tasks.py) created by the pelican-quickstart command publishes the
Pelican site as Project Pages, as described above.
Publishing a User Site to GitHub Pages from a Branch
To publish a Pelican site in the form of User Pages, you need to push
the content of the output dir generated by Pelican to the main branch
of your <username>.github.io repository on GitHub.
Again, you can take advantage of ghp-import:
$ pelican content -o output -s pelicanconf.py
$ ghp-import output -b gh-pages
$ git push git@github.com:elemoine/elemoine.github.io.git gh-pages:main
The git push command pushes the local gh-pages branch (freshly updated
by the ghp-import command) to the elemoine.github.io repository's main
branch on GitHub.
Note:
To publish your Pelican site as User Pages, feel free to adjust the
github target of the Makefile.
Another option for publishing to User Pages is to generate the output
files in the root directory of the project.
For example, your main project folder is <username>.github.io and you
can create the Pelican project in a subdirectory called Pelican. Then
from inside the Pelican folder you can run:
$ pelican content -o .. -s pelicanconf.py
Now you can push the whole project <username>.github.io to the main
branch of your GitHub repository:
$ git push origin main
(assuming origin is set to your remote repository).
Publishing to GitHub Pages Using a Custom GitHub Actions Workflow
Pelican-powered sites can be published to GitHub Pages via a custom
workflow <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/blob/main/.github/
workflows/github_pages.yml>. To use it:
1. Enable GitHub Pages in your repo: go to Settings -> Pages and choose
GitHub Actions for the Source setting.
2. Commit a .github/workflows/pelican.yml file to your repo with these
contents:
name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
on:
push:
branches: ["main"]
workflow_dispatch:
jobs:
deploy:
uses: "getpelican/pelican/.github/workflows/github_pages.yml@main"
permissions:
contents: "read"
pages: "write"
id-token: "write"
with:
settings: "publishconf.py"
You may want to replace the @main with the ID of a specific commit
in this repo in order to pin the version of the reusable workflow
that you're using: uses:
getpelican/pelican/.github/workflows/github_pages.yml@<COMMIT_ID>.
If you do this you might want to get Dependabot to send you
automated pull requests to update that commit ID whenever new
versions of this workflow are published, like so:
# .github/dependabot.yml
version: 2
updates:
- package-ecosystem: "github-actions"
directory: "/"
schedule:
interval: "monthly"
See GitHub's docs about using Dependabot to keep your actions up to
date <https://docs.github.com/en/code-security/dependabot/working-
with-dependabot/keeping-your-actions-up-to-date-with-dependabot>.
3. Go to the Actions tab in your repo
(https://github.com/<username>/<repository>/actions) and you should
see a Deploy to GitHub Pages action running.
4. Once the action completes you should see your Pelican site deployed
at your repo's GitHub Pages URL: https://<username>.github.io for a
user or organization site or
https://<username>.github.io/<repository>> for a project site.
Notes:
o You don't need to set SITEURL or FEED_DOMAIN in your Pelican
settings: the workflow will set them correctly for you
o You don't need to commit your --output / OUTPUT_PATH directory
(output/) to git: the workflow will run pelican to build the output
directory for you on GitHub Actions
See GitHub's docs about reusable workflows <https://docs.github.com/en/
actions/using-workflows/reusing-workflows> for more information.
A number of optional inputs can be added to the with: block when
calling the workflow, for example:
with:
settings: "publishconf.py"
requirements: "pelican[markdown] typogrify"
theme: "https://github.com/seanh/sidecar.git"
python: "3.12"
Here's the complete list of workflow inputs:
+-------------+----------+----------------------------------------+--------+-------------+
|Name | Required | Description | Type | Default |
+-------------+----------+----------------------------------------+--------+-------------+
|settings | Yes | The path to your Pelican settings file | string | |
| | | (pelican's --settings option), for | | |
| | | example: "publishconf.py" | | |
+-------------+----------+----------------------------------------+--------+-------------+
|requirements | No | The Python requirements to install, | string | "pelican" |
| | | for example to enable markdown and | | |
| | | typogrify use: "pelican[markdown] | | |
| | | typogrify" or if you have a | | |
| | | requirements file: "-r | | |
| | | requirements.txt" | | |
+-------------+----------+----------------------------------------+--------+-------------+
|output-path | No | Where to output the generated files | string | "output/" |
| | | (pelican's --output option) | | |
+-------------+----------+----------------------------------------+--------+-------------+
|theme | No | The GitHub repo URL of a custom theme | string | "" |
| | | to use, for example: | | |
| | | "https://github.com/seanh/sidecar.git" | | |
+-------------+----------+----------------------------------------+--------+-------------+
|python | No | The version of Python to use to build | string | "3.12" |
| | | the site, for example: "3.12" (to use | | |
| | | the most recent version of Python | | |
| | | 3.12, this is faster) or "3.12.1" (to | | |
| | | use an exact version, slower) | | |
+-------------+----------+----------------------------------------+--------+-------------+
|siteurl | No | The base URL of your web site | string | The URL of |
| | | (Pelican's SITEURL setting). If not | | your GitHub |
| | | passed this will default to the URL of | | Pages site. |
| | | your GitHub Pages site, which is | | |
| | | correct in most cases. | | |
+-------------+----------+----------------------------------------+--------+-------------+
|feed_domain | No | The domain to be prepended to feed | string | The URL of |
| | | URLs (Pelican's FEED_DOMAIN setting). | | your GitHub |
| | | If not passed this will default to the | | Pages site. |
| | | URL of your GitHub Pages site, which | | |
| | | is correct in most cases. | | |
+-------------+----------+----------------------------------------+--------+-------------+
|deploy | No | This is used to determine whether you | bool | true |
| | | will deploy the site or not to GitHub | | |
| | | Pages. This is most useful if you want | | |
| | | to test a change to your website in a | | |
| | | pull request before deploying those | | |
| | | change. | | |
+-------------+----------+----------------------------------------+--------+-------------+
Testing Your Build in a GitHub Pull Request
If you want to test your build in a pull request before deploying to
GitHub, your workflow might look something like this:
name: Build and Deploy Site
on:
push:
branches: ["main"]
pull_request:
branches: ["main"]
workflow_dispatch:
inputs:
deploy:
required: false
default: true
description: "Whether to deploy the site. If checked, then build the site and deploy it. If not checked, then just test that the site builds successfully but don't deploy anything."
type: boolean
jobs:
deploy:
uses: "getpelican/pelican/.github/workflows/github_pages.yml@main"
permissions:
id-token: write
contents: read
pages: write
with:
settings: "publishconf.py"
requirements: "-r requirements.txt"
deploy: ${{ (github.event_name == 'workflow_dispatch' && inputs.deploy == true) || (github.event_name == 'push' && github.ref_type == 'branch' && github.ref_name == github.event.repository.default_branch) }}
The on section of the workflow defines the events that will trigger the
workflow. In this example, the workflow will run on pushes to the main
branch, pull requests to the main branch, and manual runs of the
workflow.
workflow_dispatch defines the deploy boolean to be true by default.
This means that if you run the workflow manually, it will deploy the
site.
The deploy input for the job is using a set of standard GitHub workflow
variables to control when deploy will either be true or false (you can
customize this to your needs).
In this example, the deploy will be true if the event is a push to the
main branch (or merging into main from a PR) or a manual run of the
workflow. If the event is a pull request, the deploy will be false and
it will only build an artifact for the site.
"Insecure content" warnings from browsers
If your site uses https:// and is broken because the browser is
blocking network requests (for example for CSS files) due to "insecure
content" this may be because GitHub Pages is generating http:// URLs
for your site.
To fix this go into your site repo's settings and enable the Enforce
HTTPS setting: go to Settings -> Pages and check Enforce HTTPS. Then
re-run the workflow to re-deploy your site. Alternatively, you can use
the workflow's siteurl and feed_domain settings.
Custom 404 Pages
GitHub Pages will display the custom 404 page described above, as noted
in the relevant GitHub docs <https://help.github.com/articles/
custom-404-pages/>.
Update your site on each commit
To automatically update your Pelican site on each commit, you can
create a post-commit hook. For example, you can add the following to
.git/hooks/post-commit:
pelican content -o output -s pelicanconf.py && ghp-import output && git push origin gh-pages
Copy static files to the root of your site
To use a custom domain <https://help.github.com/articles/setting-up-a-
custom-domain-with-pages> with GitHub Pages, you need to put the domain
of your site (e.g., blog.example.com) inside a CNAME file at the root
of your site. To do this, create the content/extra/ directory and add a
CNAME file to it. Then use the STATIC_PATHS setting to tell Pelican to
copy this file to your output directory. For example:
STATIC_PATHS = ['images', 'extra/CNAME']
EXTRA_PATH_METADATA = {'extra/CNAME': {'path': 'CNAME'},}
Note: use forward slashes, /, even on Windows.
You can also use the EXTRA_PATH_METADATA mechanism to place a
favicon.ico or robots.txt at the root of any site.
How to add YouTube or Vimeo Videos
The easiest way is to paste the embed code of the video from these
sites directly into your source content.
Alternatively, you can also use Pelican plugins like liquid_tags,
pelican_youtube, or pelican_vimeo to embed videos in your content.
Moreover, markup languages like reST and Markdown have plugins that let
you embed videos in the markup. You can use reST video directive
<https://gist.github.com/dbrgn/2922648> for reST or mdx_video plugin
<https://github.com/italomaia/mdx-video> for Markdown.
Develop Locally Using SSL
Here's how you can set up your local pelican server to support SSL.
First, create a self-signed certificate and key using openssl (this
creates cert.pem and key.pem):
$ openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem -days 365 -nodes
And use this command to launch the server (the server starts within
your output directory):
python -m pelican.server 8443 --key=../key.pem --cert=../cert.pem
If you are using develop-server.sh, add this to the top:
CERT="$BASEDIR/cert.pem"
KEY="$BASEDIR/key.pem"
and modify the pelican.server line as follows:
$PY -m pelican.server $port --ssl --cert="$CERT" --key="$KEY" &
Contributing and feedback guidelines
There are many ways to contribute to Pelican. You can improve the
documentation, add missing features, and fix bugs (or just report
them). You can also help out by reviewing and commenting on existing
issues <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/issues>.
Don't hesitate to fork Pelican and submit an issue or pull request on
GitHub. When doing so, please consider the following guidelines.
Filing issues
o Before you submit a new issue, try asking for help first.
o If determined to create a new issue, first search Pelican Discussions
<https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/discussions> and existing
issues <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/issues> (open and
closed) to see if your question has already been answered previously.
How to get help
Before you ask for help, please make sure you do the following:
1. Read the documentation <https://docs.getpelican.com/> thoroughly. If
in a hurry, at least use the search field that is provided at
top-left on the documentation <https://docs.getpelican.com/> pages.
Make sure you read the docs for the Pelican version you are using.
2. Use a search engine (e.g., DuckDuckGo, Google) to search for a
solution to your problem. Someone may have already found a solution,
perhaps in the form of a 'plugins <https://docs.getpelican.com/en/
latest/plugins.html> or a specific combination of settings.
3. Try reproducing the issue in a clean environment, ensuring you are
using:
o latest Pelican release (or an up-to-date Git clone of Pelican main
branch)
o latest releases of libraries used by Pelican
o no plugins or only those related to the issue
NOTE: The most common sources of problems are anomalies in (1) themes,
(2) plugins, (3) settings files, and (4) make/invoke automation
wrappers. If you can't reproduce your problem when using the following
steps to generate your site, then the problem is almost certainly with
one of the above-listed elements (and not Pelican itself):
cd ~/projects/your-site
git clone https://github.com/getpelican/pelican ~/projects/pelican
pelican content -s ~/projects/pelican/samples/pelican.conf.py -t ~/projects/pelican/pelican/themes/notmyidea
If you can generate your site without problems using the steps above,
then your problem is unlikely to be caused by Pelican itself, and
therefore please consider reaching out to the maintainers of the
plugins/theme you are using instead of raising the topic with the
Pelican core community.
If despite the above efforts you still cannot resolve your problem, be
sure to include in your inquiry the following information, preferably
in the form of links to content uploaded to a paste service <https://
dpaste.com>, GitHub repository, or other publicly-accessible location:
o Describe what version of Pelican you are running (output of pelican
--version or the HEAD commit hash if you cloned the repo) and how
exactly you installed it (the full command you used, e.g. python -m
pip install pelican).
o If you are looking for a way to get some end result, prepare a
detailed description of what the end result should look like
(preferably in the form of an image or a mock-up page) and explain in
detail what you have done so far to achieve it.
o If you are trying to solve some issue, prepare a detailed description
of how to reproduce the problem. If the issue cannot be easily
reproduced, it cannot be debugged by developers or volunteers.
Describe only the minimum steps necessary to reproduce it (no extra
plugins, etc.).
o Upload your settings file or any other custom code that would enable
people to reproduce the problem or to see what you have already tried
to achieve the desired end result.
o Upload detailed and complete output logs and backtraces (remember to
add the --debug flag: pelican --debug content [...])
Once the above preparation is ready, you can post your query as a new
thread in Pelican Discussions <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/
discussions>. Remember to include all the information you prepared.
Contributing code
Before you submit a contribution, please ask whether it is desired so
that you don't spend a lot of time working on something that would be
rejected for a known reason. Consider also whether your new feature
might be better suited as a 'plugins <https://docs.getpelican.com/en/
latest/plugins.html> -- you can ask for help to make that
determination.
Also, if you intend to submit a pull request to address something for
which there is no existing issue, there is no need to create a new
issue and then immediately submit a pull request that closes it. You
can submit the pull request by itself.
Using Git and GitHub
o Create a new branch <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/wiki/Git-
Tips#making-your-changes> specific to your change (as opposed to
making your commits in the main branch).
o Don't put multiple unrelated fixes/features in the same branch / pull
request. For example, if you're working on a new feature and find a
bugfix that doesn't require your new feature, make a new distinct
branch and pull request for the bugfix. Similarly, any proposed
changes to code style formatting should be in a completely separate
pull request.
o Add a RELEASE.md file in the root of the project that contains the
release type (major, minor, patch) and a summary of the changes that
will be used as the release changelog entry. For example:
Release type: minor
Reload browser window upon changes to content, settings, or theme
o Check for unnecessary whitespace via git diff --check before
committing.
o First line of your commit message should start with present-tense
verb, be 50 characters or less, and include the relevant issue
number(s) if applicable. Example: Ensure proper PLUGIN_PATH
behavior. Refs #428. If the commit completely fixes an existing bug
report, please use Fixes #585 or Fix #585 syntax (so the relevant
issue is automatically closed upon PR merge).
o After the first line of the commit message, add a blank line and then
a more detailed explanation (when relevant).
o Squash your commits <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/wiki/Git-
Tips#squashing-commits> to eliminate merge commits and ensure a clean
and readable commit history.
o After you have issued a pull request, the continuous integration (CI)
system will run the test suite on all supported Python versions and
check for code style compliance. If any of these checks fail, you
should fix them. (If tests fail on the CI system but seem to pass
locally, ensure that local test runs aren't skipping any tests.)
Contribution quality standards
o Adhere to the project's code style standards. See: Development
Environment <https://docs.getpelican.com/en/latest/contribute.html#
setting-up-the-development-environment>
o Ensure your code is compatible with the officially-supported Python
releases <https://devguide.python.org/versions/#versions>.
o Add docs and tests for your changes. Undocumented and untested
features will not be accepted.
o Run all the tests <https://docs.getpelican.com/en/latest/contribute
.html> on all versions of Python supported by Pelican to ensure
nothing was accidentally broken.
Check out our Git Tips <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/wiki/Git-
Tips> page or ask for help if you need assistance or have any questions
about these guidelines.
Setting up the development environment
While there are many ways to set up one's development environment, the
following instructions will utilize Pip <https://pip.pypa.io/> and PDM
<https://pdm.fming.dev/latest/>. These tools facilitate managing
virtual environments for separate Python projects that are isolated
from one another, so you can use different packages (and package
versions) for each.
Please note that Python >=3.9 is required for Pelican development.
(Optional) If you prefer to install PDM <https://pdm.fming.dev/latest/#
installation> once for use with multiple projects, you can install it
via:
curl -sSL https://pdm.fming.dev/install-pdm.py | python3 -
Point your web browser to the Pelican repository <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican> and tap the Fork button at top-right. Then clone
the source for your fork and add the upstream project as a Git remote:
mkdir ~/projects
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/pelican.git ~/projects/pelican
cd ~/projects/pelican
git remote add upstream https://github.com/getpelican/pelican.git
While PDM can dynamically create and manage virtual environments, we're
going to manually create and activate a virtual environment:
mkdir ~/virtualenvs && cd ~/virtualenvs
python3 -m venv pelican
source ~/virtualenvs/pelican/*/activate
Install the needed dependencies and set up the project:
python -m pip install invoke
invoke setup
Your local environment should now be ready to go!
Development
Once Pelican has been set up for local development, create a topic
branch for your bug fix or feature:
git checkout -b name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature
Now you can make changes to Pelican, its documentation, and/or other
aspects of the project.
Setting up git blame (optional)
git blame annotates lines in a file with information about the pull
request that last modified it. Sweeping shallow changes (like
formatting) can make that information less useful, so we keep a list of
such changes to be ignored. Run the following command to set this up in
your repository, adding --global if you want this setting to apply to
all repositories:
git config blame.ignoreRevsFile .git-blame-ignore-revs
As noted in a useful article <https://www.michaelheap.com/git-ignore-
rev/> about git blame, there are other related settings you may find to
be beneficial:
# Add `?` to any lines that have had a commit skipped using --ignore-rev
git config --global blame.markIgnoredLines true
# Add `*` to any lines that were added in a skipped commit and can not be attributed
git config --global blame.markUnblamableLines true
Running the test suite
Each time you make changes to Pelican, there are two things to do
regarding tests: check that the existing tests pass, and add tests for
any new features or bug fixes. The tests are located in pelican/tests,
and you can run them via:
invoke tests
(For more on Invoke, see invoke -l to list tasks, or <https://pyinvoke
.org> for documentation.)
In addition to running the test suite, it is important to also ensure
that any lines you changed conform to code style guidelines. You can
check that via:
invoke lint
If code style violations are found in lines you changed, correct those
lines and re-run the above lint command until they have all been fixed.
You do not need to address style violations, if any, for code lines you
did not touch.
After making your changes and running the tests, you may see a test
failure mentioning that "some generated files differ from the expected
functional tests output." If you have made changes that affect the HTML
output generated by Pelican, and the changes to that output are
expected and deemed correct given the nature of your changes, then you
should update the output used by the functional tests. To do so, make
sure you have both en_EN.utf8 and fr_FR.utf8 locales installed, and
then run the following command:
invoke update-functional-tests
You may also find that some tests are skipped because some dependency
(e.g., Pandoc) is not installed. This does not automatically mean that
these tests have passed; you should at least verify that any skipped
tests are not affected by your changes.
You should run the test suite under each of the supported versions of
Python. This is best done by creating a separate Python environment
for each version. Tox <https://tox.readthedocs.io/en/latest/> is a
useful tool to automate running tests inside virtualenv environments.
Running a code coverage report
Code is more likely to stay robust if it is tested. Coverage <https://
github.com/nedbat/coveragepy> is a library that measures how much of
the code is tested. To run it:
invoke coverage
This will show overall coverage, coverage per file, and even
line-by-line coverage. There is also an HTML report available:
open htmlcov/index.html
Building the docs
If you make changes to the documentation, you should build and inspect
your changes before committing them:
invoke docserve
Open <http://localhost:8000> in your browser to review the
documentation. While the above task is running, any changes you make
and save to the documentation should automatically appear in the
browser, as it live-reloads when it detects changes to the
documentation source files.
Plugin development
To create a new Pelican plugin, please refer to the plugin template
<https://github.com/getpelican/cookiecutter-pelican-plugin> repository
for detailed instructions.
If you want to contribute to an existing Pelican plugin, follow the
steps above to set up Pelican for local development, and then create a
directory to store cloned plugin repositories:
mkdir -p ~/projects/pelican-plugins
Assuming you wanted to contribute to the Simple Footnotes plugin, you
would first browse to the Simple Footnotes <https://github.com/pelican-
plugins/simple-footnotes> repository on GitHub and tap the Fork button
at top-right. Then clone the source for your fork and add the upstream
project as a Git remote:
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/simple-footnotes.git ~/projects/pelican-plugins/simple-footnotes
cd ~/projects/pelican-plugins/simple-footnotes
git remote add upstream https://github.com/pelican-plugins/simple-footnotes.git
Install the needed dependencies and set up the project:
invoke setup
Create a topic branch for your plugin bug fix or feature:
git checkout -b name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature
After writing new tests for your plugin changes, run the plugin test
suite and check for code style compliance via:
invoke tests
invoke lint
If style violations are found, many of them can be addressed
automatically via:
invoke format
If style violations are found even after running the above
auto-formatters, you will need to make additional manual changes until
invoke lint no longer reports any code style violations.
Submitting your changes
Assuming linting validation and tests pass, add a RELEASE.md file in
the root of the project that contains the release type (major, minor,
patch) and a summary of the changes that will be used as the release
changelog entry. For example:
Release type: patch
Fix browser reloading upon changes to content, settings, or theme
Commit your changes and push your topic branch:
git add .
git commit -m "Your detailed description of your changes"
git push origin name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature
Finally, browse to your repository fork on GitHub and submit a pull
request.
Logging tips
Try to use logging with appropriate levels.
For logging messages that are not repeated, use the usual Python way:
# at top of file
import logging
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
# when needed
logger.warning("A warning with %s formatting", arg_to_be_formatted)
Do not format log messages yourself. Use %s formatting in messages and
pass arguments to logger. This is important, because the Pelican logger
will preprocess some arguments, such as exceptions.
Limiting extraneous log messages
If the log message can occur several times, you may want to limit the
log to prevent flooding. In order to do that, use the extra keyword
argument for the logging message in the following format:
logger.warning("A warning with %s formatting", arg_to_be_formatted,
extra={'limit_msg': 'A generic message for too many warnings'})
Optionally, you can also set 'limit_args' as a tuple of arguments in
extra dict if your generic message needs formatting.
Limit is set to 5, i.e, first four logs with the same 'limit_msg' are
outputted normally but the fifth one will be logged using 'limit_msg'
(and 'limit_args' if present). After the fifth, corresponding log
messages will be ignored.
For example, if you want to log missing resources, use the following
code:
for resource in resources:
if resource.is_missing:
logger.warning(
'The resource %s is missing', resource.name,
extra={'limit_msg': 'Other resources were missing'})
The log messages will be displayed as follows:
WARNING: The resource prettiest_cat.jpg is missing
WARNING: The resource best_cat_ever.jpg is missing
WARNING: The resource cutest_cat.jpg is missing
WARNING: The resource lolcat.jpg is missing
WARNING: Other resources were missing
Outputting traceback in the logs
If you're logging inside an except block, you may want to provide the
traceback information as well. You can do that by setting exc_info
keyword argument to True during logging. However, doing so by default
can be undesired because tracebacks are long and can be confusing to
regular users. Try to limit them to --debug mode like the following:
try:
some_action()
except Exception as e:
logger.error('Exception occurred: %s', e,
exc_info=settings.get('DEBUG', False))
Pelican internals
This section describe how Pelican works internally. As you'll see, it's
quite simple, but a bit of documentation doesn't hurt. :)
You can also find in the Some history about Pelican <> section an
excerpt of a report the original author wrote with some software design
information.
Overall structure
What Pelican does is take a list of files and process them into some
sort of output. Usually, the input files are reStructuredText and
Markdown files, and the output is a blog, but both input and output can
be anything you want.
The logic is separated into different classes and concepts:
o Writers are responsible for writing files: .html files, RSS feeds,
and so on. Since those operations are commonly used, the object is
created once and then passed to the generators.
o Readers are used to read from various formats (HTML, Markdown and
reStructuredText for now, but the system is extensible). Given a
file, they return metadata (author, tags, category, etc.) and content
(HTML-formatted).
o Generators generate the different outputs. For instance, Pelican
comes with ArticlesGenerator and PageGenerator. Given a
configuration, they can do whatever they want. Most of the time, it's
generating files from inputs.
o Pelican also uses templates, so it's easy to write your own theme.
The syntax is Jinja2 <https://palletsprojects.com/p/jinja/> and is
very easy to learn, so don't hesitate to jump in and build your own
theme.
How to implement a new reader?
Is there an awesome markup language you want to add to Pelican? Well,
the only thing you have to do is to create a class with a read method
that returns HTML content and some metadata.
Take a look at the Markdown reader:
from pelican.readers import BaseReader
from pelican.utils import pelican_open
from markdown import Markdown
class MarkdownReader(BaseReader):
enabled = True
def read(self, source_path):
"""Parse content and metadata of markdown files"""
with pelican_open(source_path) as text:
md_extensions = {'markdown.extensions.meta': {},
'markdown.extensions.codehilite': {}}
md = Markdown(extensions=md_extensions.keys(),
extension_configs=md_extensions)
content = md.convert(text)
metadata = {}
for name, value in md.Meta.items():
name = name.lower()
meta = self.process_metadata(name, value[0])
metadata[name] = meta
return content, metadata
Simple, isn't it?
If your new reader requires additional Python dependencies, then you
should wrap their import statements in a try...except block. Then
inside the reader's class, set the enabled class attribute to mark
import success or failure. This makes it possible for users to continue
using their favourite markup method without needing to install modules
for formats they don't use.
How to implement a new generator?
Generators have two important methods. You're not forced to create
both; only the existing ones will be called.
o generate_context, that is called first, for all the generators. Do
whatever you have to do, and update the global context if needed.
This context is shared between all generators, and will be passed to
the templates. For instance, the PageGenerator generate_context
method finds all the pages, transforms them into objects, and
populates the context with them. Be careful not to output anything
using this context at this stage, as it is likely to change by the
effect of other generators.
o generate_output is then called. And guess what is it made for? Oh,
generating the output. :) It's here that you may want to look at the
context and call the methods of the writer object that is passed as
the first argument of this function. In the PageGenerator example,
this method will look at all the pages recorded in the global context
and output a file on the disk (using the writer method write_file)
for each page encountered.
Some history about Pelican
Warning:
This page comes from a report the original author (Alexis Metaireau)
wrote right after writing Pelican, in December 2010. The information
may not be up-to-date.
Pelican is a simple static blog generator. It parses markup files
(Markdown or reStructuredText for now) and generates an HTML folder
with all the files in it. I've chosen to use Python to implement
Pelican because it seemed to be simple and to fit to my needs. I did
not wanted to define a class for each thing, but still wanted to keep
my things loosely coupled. It turns out that it was exactly what I
wanted. From time to time, thanks to the feedback of some users, it
took me a very few time to provide fixes on it. So far, I've
re-factored the Pelican code by two times; each time took less than 30
minutes.
Use case
I was previously using WordPress, a solution you can host on a web
server to manage your blog. Most of the time, I prefer using markup
languages such as Markdown or reStructuredText to type my articles. To
do so, I use vim. I think it is important to let the people choose the
tool they want to write the articles. In my opinion, a blog manager
should just allow you to take any kind of input and transform it to a
weblog. That's what Pelican does. You can write your articles using the
tool you want, and the markup language you want, and then generate a
static HTML weblog. [image]
To be flexible enough, Pelican has template support, so you can easily
write your own themes if you want to.
Design process
Pelican came from a need I have. I started by creating a single file
application, and I have make it grow to support what it does by now. To
start, I wrote a piece of documentation about what I wanted to do.
Then, I created the content I wanted to parse (the reStructuredText
files) and started experimenting with the code. Pelican was 200 lines
long and contained almost ten functions and one class when it was first
usable.
I have been facing different problems all over the time and wanted to
add features to Pelican while using it. The first change I have done
was to add the support of a settings file. It is possible to pass the
options to the command line, but can be tedious if there is a lot of
them. In the same way, I have added the support of different things
over time: Atom feeds, multiple themes, multiple markup support, etc.
At some point, it appears that the "only one file" mantra was not good
enough for Pelican, so I decided to rework a bit all that, and split
this in multiple different files.
I've separated the logic in different classes and concepts:
o writers are responsible of all the writing process of the files.
They are responsible of writing .html files, RSS feeds and so on.
Since those operations are commonly used, the object is created once,
and then passed to the generators.
o readers are used to read from various formats (Markdown and
reStructuredText for now, but the system is extensible). Given a
file, they return metadata (author, tags, category, etc) and content
(HTML formatted).
o generators generate the different outputs. For instance, Pelican
comes with an ArticlesGenerator and PagesGenerator, into others.
Given a configuration, they can do whatever you want them to do. Most
of the time it's generating files from inputs (user inputs and
files).
I also deal with contents objects. They can be Articles, Pages, Quotes,
or whatever you want. They are defined in the contents.py module and
represent some content to be used by the program.
In more detail
Here is an overview of the classes involved in Pelican. [image]
The interface does not really exist, and I have added it only to
clarify the whole picture. I do use duck typing and not interfaces.
Internally, the following process is followed:
o First of all, the command line is parsed, and some content from the
user is used to initialize the different generator objects.
o A context is created. It contains the settings from the command line
and a settings file if provided.
o The generate_context method of each generator is called, updating the
context.
o The writer is created and given to the generate_output method of each
generator.
I make two calls because it is important that when the output is
generated by the generators, the context will not change. In other
words, the first method generate_context should modify the context,
whereas the second generate_output method should not.
Then, it is up to the generators to do what the want, in the
generate_context and generate_content method. Taking the
ArticlesGenerator class will help to understand some others concepts.
Here is what happens when calling the generate_context method:
o Read the folder "path", looking for restructured text files, load
each of them, and construct a content object (Article) with it. To do
so, use Reader objects.
o Update the context with all those articles.
Then, the generate_content method uses the context and the writer to
generate the wanted output.
Release history
4.11.0 - 2025-01-15
o Add setting to selectively omit Typogrify filters (#3439) <https://
github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/3439>
o Add more blocks to the Simple theme's base template, making it easier
to create new themes by inheriting from the Simple theme (#3405)
<https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/3405>
o Fix auto-reload behavior upon changes to the theme, content or
settings. Make default IGNORE_FILES recursively ignore all hidden
files as well as the default filters <https://watchfiles.helpmanual
.io/api/filters/#watchfiles.DefaultFilter.ignore_dirs> from
watchfiles.DefaultFilter. (#3441) <https://github.com/getpelican/
pelican/pull/3441>
o Get current year from the SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH environment variable, if
available (#3430) <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/3430>
o Add Python 3.13 to test matrix and remove Python 3.8 (#3435)
<https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/3435>
o Require Typogrify 2.1+ and Pygments <2.19
4.10.2 - 2024-11-27
o Change IGNORE_FILES setting default to ignore all hidden files
o Fix SUMMARY_MAX_PARAGRAPHS not being respected in some combinations
with SUMMARY_MAX_LENGTH
4.10.1 - 2024-09-28
o Fix error when running pelican -r -l
o Fix symlink handling in pelican-themes
4.10.0 - 2024-09-16
o Add setting to specify summary via paragraph count
o Add new status to skip generation of a post
o Add setting to append ref parameter to links in feeds
o Configure logging handler via --log-handler CLI option
o Resolve intra-site links in summaries
o Warn when files are not processed due to disabled readers
o Add Medium post importer
o Improve GitHub Pages workflow
o Improve code test coverage
o Translate documentation into Simplified Chinese
4.9.1 - 2023-11-15
o Ensure tzdata dependency is installed on Windows
4.9.0 - 2023-11-12
o Upgrade code to new minimum supported Python version: 3.8
o Settings support for pathlib.Path (#2758) <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican/pull/2758>
o Various improvements to Simple theme (#2976 <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican/pull/2976> & #3234 <https://github.com/getpelican/
pelican/pull/3234>)
o Use Furo as Sphinx documentation theme (#3023) <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican/pull/3023>
o Default to 100 articles maximum in feeds (#3127) <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican/pull/3127>
o Add period_archives common context variable (#3148) <https://github
.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/3148>
o Use watchfiles as the file-watching backend (#3151) <https://github
.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/3151>
o Add GitHub Actions workflow for GitHub Pages (#3189) <https://github
.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/3189>
o Allow dataclasses in settings (#3204) <https://github.com/getpelican/
pelican/pull/3204>
o Switch build tool to PDM instead of Setuptools/Poetry (#3220)
<https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/3220>
o Provide a plugin_enabled Jinja test for themes (#3235) <https://
github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/3235>
o Preserve connection order in Blinker (#3238) <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican/pull/3238>
o Remove social icons from default notmyidea theme (#3240) <https://
github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/3240>
o Remove unreliable WRITE_SELECTED feature (#3243) <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican/pull/3243>
o Importer: Report broken embedded video links when importing from
Tumblr (#3177) <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/issues/3177>
o Importer: Remove newline addition when iterating Photo post types
(#3178) <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/issues/3178>
o Importer: Force timestamp conversion in Tumblr importer to be UTC
with offset (#3221) <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/3221>
o Importer: Use tempfile for intermediate HTML file for Pandoc (#3221)
<https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/3221>
o Switch linters to Ruff (#3223) <https://github.com/getpelican/
pelican/pull/3223>
4.8.0 - 2022-07-11
o Use JSON values for extra settings in Invoke tasks template (#2994)
<https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/2994>
o Add content tag for links, which can help with things like Twitter
social cards (#3001) <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/
3001>
o Improve word count behavior when generating summary (#3002) <https://
github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/3002>
4.7.2 - 2022-02-09
o Fix incorrect parsing of parameters specified via -e /
--extra-settings option flags (#2938) <https://github.com/getpelican/
pelican/pull/2938>
o Add categories.html template to default theme (#2973) <https://github
.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/2973>
o Document how to use plugins to inject content (#2922) <https://github
.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/2922>
4.7.1 - 2021-10-12
o Extend rich logging to server component (#2927) <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican/pull/2927>
o Fix an issue where metadata flagged to be discarded was being cached
(#2926) <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/2926>
o Adjust suffix in server to allow redirection when needed (#2931)
<https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/2931>
o Add MIME types for web fonts (#2929) <https://github.com/getpelican/
pelican/pull/2929>
o Distribute sample data used to run tests (#2935) <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican/pull/2935>
o Add Python 3.10 to test matrix
4.7.0 - 2021-10-01
o Improve default theme rendering on mobile and other small screen
devices (#2914) <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/2914>
o Add support for hidden articles (#2866) <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican/pull/2866>
o Improve word count behavior when generating summary CJK & other
locales (#2864) <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/2864>
o Add progress spinner during generation (#2869) <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican/pull/2869> and richer logging (#2897) <https://
github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/2897>, both via Rich <https://
github.com/willmcgugan/rich>
o Invoke tasks serve and livereload now auto-open a web browser
pointing to the locally-served web site (#2764) <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican/pull/2764>
o Support some date format codes used by ISO dates (#2902) <https://
github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/2902>
o Document how to add a new writer (#2901) <https://github.com/
getpelican/pelican/pull/2901>
4.6.0 - 2021-03-23
o Add new URL pattern to PAGINATION_PATTERNS for the last page in the
list (#1401) <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/issues/1401>
o Speed up livereload Invoke task via caching (#2847) <https://github
.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/2847>
o Ignore None return value from get_generators signal (#2850) <https://
github.com/getpelican/pelican/pull/2850>
o Relax dependency minimum versions and remove upper bounds
4.5.4 - 2021-01-04
Replace plugin definitions in settings with string representations
after registering, so they can be cached correctly (#2828) <https://
github.com/getpelican/pelican/issues/2828>.
4.5.3 - 2020-12-01
Fix a mistake made in PR #2821
4.5.2 - 2020-11-22
Improve logging of generators and writer loaders
4.5.1 - 2020-11-02
o Refactor intra-site link discovery in order to match more
permissively (#2646) <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/issues/
2646>
o Fix plugins running twice in auto-reload mode (#2817) <https://github
.com/getpelican/pelican/issues/2817>
o Add notice to use from pelican import signals instead of import
pelican.signals (#2805) <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/
issues/2805>
4.5.0 - 2020-08-20
o Add namespace plugin support; list plugins via pelican-plugins
command
o Override settings via -e / --extra-settings CLI option flags
o Add settings for custom Jinja globals and tests
o Customize article summary ellipsis via SUMMARY_END_SUFFIX setting
o Customize Typogrify dash handling via new TYPOGRIFY_DASHES setting
o Support Unicode when generating slugs
o Support Asciidoc .adoc file generation in Pelican importer
o Improve user experience when pelican --listen web server is quit
o Improve Invoke tasks template
o Include tests in source distributions
o Switch CI from Travis to GitHub Actions
o Remove support for Python 2.7
4.2.0 - 2019-10-17
o Support inline SVGs; don't treat titles in SVGs as HTML titles
o Add category to feeds (in addition to tags)
o Improve content metadata field docs
o Add docs for including other Markdown/reST files in content
4.1.3 - 2019-10-09
o Fix quick-start docs regarding pelican --listen
o Set default listen address to 127.0.0.1
o Add extra/optional Markdown dependency to setup.py
o Use correct SSH port syntax for rsync in tasks.py
o Place all deprecated settings handling together
o Add related project URLs for display on PyPI
o Skip some tests on Windows that can't pass due to filesystem
differences
4.1.2 - 2019-09-23
Fix pelican.settings.load_source to avoid caching issues - PR #2621
4.1.1 - 2019-08-23
o Add AutoPub to auto-publish releases on PR merge
o Add CSS classes for reStructuredText figures
o Pass argv to Pelican main entrypoint
o Set default content status to a blank string rather than None
4.1.0 - 2019-07-14
o Live browser reload upon changed files (provided via Invoke task)
o Add pyproject.toml, managed by Poetry
o Support for invoking python -m pelican
o Add relative source path attribute to content
o Allow directories in EXTRA_PATH_METADATA
o Add all_articles variable to period pages (for recent posts
functionality)
o Improve debug mode output
o Remove blank or duplicate summaries from Atom feed
o Fix bugs in pagination, pelican-import, pelican-quickstart, and feed
importer
4.0.1 (2018-11-30)
o Refactor pelican.server logging
o Fix bug in which all static files were processed as "draft"
o Bug fixes for Invoke/Makefile automation, Importer, and other
miscellanea
If upgrading from 3.7.x or earlier, please note that slug-related
settings in 4.0+ use {slug} and/or {lang} rather than %s. If %s-style
settings are encountered, Pelican will emit a warning and fall back to
the default setting. Some user-submitted themes might try to format
setting values but fail upon site build with a TypeError. In such
cases, the theme needs to be updated. For example, instead of
TAG_FEED_ATOM|format(tag.slug), use TAG_FEED_ATOM.format(slug=tag.slug)
4.0.0 (2018-11-13)
o Replace develop_server.sh script with pelican --listen
o Improved copy/link behavior for large static files (e.g., videos)
o New {static} syntax to link to static content; content linked to by
{static} and {attach} is automatically copied over even if not in
STATIC_PATHS
o Pages can now have draft status
o Show current settings via new --print-settings flag
o All settings for slugs now use {slug} and/or {lang} rather than %s.
If %s-style settings are encountered, Pelican will emit a warning and
fallback to the default setting.
o New signals: feed_generated and page_generated_write_page
o Replace Fabric with Invoke and fabfile.py template with tasks.py
o Replace PAGINATED_DIRECT_TEMPLATES by PAGINATED_TEMPLATES, extending
control over pagination to all templates and making page size
variable
o Replace SLUG_SUBSTITUTIONS (and friends) by SLUG_REGEX_SUBSTITUTIONS
for more finegrained control
o '{base_name}' value in PAGINATION_PATTERNS setting no longer strips
'bar' from 'foo/bar.html' (unless 'bar' == 'index').
o ARTICLE_ORDER_BY and PAGE_ORDER_BY now also affect 1) category, tag
and author pages 2) feeds 3) draft and hidden articles and pages
o New ARTICLE_TRANSLATION_ID and PAGE_TRANSLATION_ID settings to
specify metadata attributes used to identify/disable translations
o Make the HTML reader parse multiple occurrences of metadata tags as a
list
o New Blogger XML backup importer
o Wordpress importer now updates file links to point to local copies if
the files were downloaded with --wp-attach.
o Importer no longer inserts extra newlines, to prevent breaking of
HTML attributes.
o Pelican server now prioritises foo.html and foo/index.html over foo/
when resolving foo.
3.7.1 (2017-01-10)
o Fix locale issues in Quickstart script
o Specify encoding for README and CHANGELOG in setup.py
3.7.0 (2016-12-12)
o Atom feeds output <content> in addition to <summary>
o Atom feeds use <published> for the original publication date and
<updated> for modifications
o Simplify Atom feed ID generation and support URL fragments
o Produce category feeds with category-specific titles
o RSS feeds now default to summary instead of full content; set
RSS_FEED_SUMMARY_ONLY = False to revert to previous behavior
o Replace MD_EXTENSIONS with MARKDOWN setting
o Replace JINJA_EXTENSIONS with more-robust JINJA_ENVIRONMENT setting
o Improve summary truncation logic to handle special characters and
tags that span multiple lines, using HTML parser instead of regular
expressions
o Include summary when looking for intra-site link substitutions
o Link to authors and index via {author}name and {index} syntax
o Override widget names via LINKS_WIDGET_NAME and SOCIAL_WIDGET_NAME
o Add INDEX_SAVE_AS option to override default index.html value
o Remove PAGES context variable for themes in favor of pages
o SLUG_SUBSTITUTIONS now accepts 3-tuple elements, allowing URL slugs
to contain non-alphanumeric characters
o Tag and category slugs can be controlled with greater precision using
the TAG_SUBSTITUTIONS and CATEGORY_SUBSTITUTIONS settings
o Author slugs can be controlled with greater precision using the
AUTHOR_SUBSTITUTIONS setting
o DEFAULT_DATE can be defined as a string
o Use mtime instead of ctime when DEFAULT_DATE = 'fs'
o Add --fatal=errors|warnings option for use with continuous
integration
o When using generator-level caching, ensure previously-cached files
are processed instead of just new files.
o Add Python and Pelican version information to debug output
o Improve compatibility with Python 3.5
o Comply with and enforce PEP8 guidelines
o Replace tables in settings documentation with data:: directives
3.6.3 (2015-08-14)
o Fix permissions issue in release tarball
3.6.2 (2015-08-01)
o Fix installation errors related to Unicode in tests
o Don't show pagination in notmyidea theme if there's only one page
o Make hidden pages available in context
o Improve URLWrapper comparison
3.6.0 (2015-06-15)
o Disable caching by default in order to prevent potential confusion
o Improve caching behavior, replacing pickle with cpickle
o Allow Markdown or reST content in metadata fields other than summary
o Support semicolon-separated author/tag lists
o Improve flexibility of article sorting
o Add --relative-urls argument
o Support devserver listening on addresses other than localhost
o Unify HTTP server handlers to pelican.server throughout
o Handle intra-site links to draft posts
o Move tag_cloud from core to plugin
o Load default theme's external resources via HTTPS
o Import drafts from WordPress XML
o Improve support for Windows users
o Enhance logging and test suite
o Clean up and refactor codebase
o New signals: all_generators_finalized and page_writer_finalized
3.5.0 (2014-11-04)
o Introduce ARTICLE_ORDER_BY and PAGE_ORDER_BY settings to control the
order of articles and pages.
o Include time zone information in dates rendered in templates.
o Expose the reader name in the metadata for articles and pages.
o Add the ability to store static files along with content in the same
directory as articles and pages using {attach} in the path.
o Prevent Pelican from raising an exception when there are duplicate
pieces of metadata in a Markdown file.
o Introduce the TYPOGRIFY_IGNORE_TAGS setting to add HTML tags to be
ignored by Typogrify.
o Add the ability to use - in date formats to strip leading zeros. For
example, %-d/%-m/%y will now result in the date 9/8/12.
o Ensure feed generation is correctly disabled during quickstart
configuration.
o Fix PAGE_EXCLUDES and ARTICLE_EXCLUDES from incorrectly matching
sub-directories.
o Introduce STATIC_EXCLUDE setting to add static file excludes.
o Fix an issue when using PAGINATION_PATTERNS while RELATIVE_URLS is
enabled.
o Fix feed generation causing links to use the wrong language for month
names when using other locales.
o Fix an issue where the authors list in the simple template wasn't
correctly formatted.
o Fix an issue when parsing non-string URLs from settings.
o Improve consistency of debug and warning messages.
3.4.0 (2014-07-01)
o Speed up content generation via new caching mechanism
o Add selective post generation (instead of always building entire
site)
o Many documentation improvements, including switching to prettier RtD
theme
o Add support for multiple content and plugin paths
o Add :modified: metadata field to complement :date:. Used to specify
the last date and time an article was updated independently from the
date and time it was published.
o Add support for multiple authors via new :authors: metadata field
o Watch for changes in static directories when in auto-regeneration
mode
o Add filters to limit log output when desired
o Add language support to drafts
o Add SLUGIFY_SOURCE setting to control how post slugs are generated
o Fix many issues relating to locale and encoding
o Apply Typogrify filter to post summary
o Preserve file metadata (e.g. time stamps) when copying static files
to output
o Move AsciiDoc support from Pelican core into separate plugin
o Produce inline links instead of reference-style links when importing
content
o Improve handling of IGNORE_FILES setting behavior
o Properly escape symbol characters in tag names (e.g., C++)
o Minor tweaks for Python 3.4 compatibility
o Add several new signals
3.3.0 (2013-09-24)
o Drop Python 3.2 support in favor of Python 3.3
o Add Fabfile so Fabric can be used for workflow automation instead of
Make
o OUTPUT_RETENTION setting can be used to preserve metadata (e.g., VCS
data such as .hg and .git) from being removed from output directory
o Tumblr import
o Improve logic and consistency when cleaning output folder
o Improve documentation versioning and release automation
o Improve pagination flexibility
o Rename signals for better consistency (some plugins may need to be
updated)
o Move metadata extraction from generators to readers; metadata
extraction no longer article-specific
o Deprecate FILES_TO_COPY in favor of STATIC_PATHS and
EXTRA_PATH_METADATA
o Summaries in Markdown posts no longer include footnotes
o Remove unnecessary whitespace in output via lstrip_blocks Jinja
parameter
o Move PDF generation from core to plugin
o Replace MARKUP setting with READERS
o Add warning if img tag is missing alt attribute
o Add support for {} in relative links syntax, besides ||
o Add support for {tag} and {category} relative links
o Add a content_written signal
3.2.1 and 3.2.2
o Facilitate inclusion in FreeBSD Ports Collection
3.2 (2013-04-24)
o Support for Python 3!
o Override page save-to location from meta-data (enables using a static
page as the site's home page, for example)
o Time period archives (per-year, per-month, and per-day archives of
posts)
o Posterous blog import
o Improve WordPress blog import
o Migrate plugins to separate repository
o Improve HTML parser
o Provide ability to show or hide categories from menu using
DISPLAY_CATEGORIES_ON_MENU option
o Auto-regeneration can be told to ignore files via IGNORE_FILES
setting
o Improve post-generation feedback to user
o For multilingual posts, use meta-data to designate which is the
original and which is the translation
o Add .mdown to list of supported Markdown file extensions
o Document-relative URL generation (RELATIVE_URLS) is now off by
default
3.1 (2012-12-04)
o Importer now stores slugs within files by default. This can be
disabled with the --disable-slugs option.
o Improve handling of links to intra-site resources
o Ensure WordPress import adds paragraphs for all types of line endings
in post content
o Decode HTML entities within WordPress post titles on import
o Improve appearance of LinkedIn icon in default theme
o Add GitHub and Google+ social icons support in default theme
o Optimize social icons
o Add FEED_ALL_ATOM and FEED_ALL_RSS to generate feeds containing all
posts regardless of their language
o Split TRANSLATION_FEED into TRANSLATION_FEED_ATOM and
TRANSLATION_FEED_RSS
o Different feeds can now be enabled/disabled individually
o Allow for blank author: if AUTHOR setting is not set, author won't
default to ${USER} anymore, and a post won't contain any author
information if the post author is empty
o Move LESS and Webassets support from Pelican core to plugin
o The DEFAULT_DATE setting now defaults to None, which means that
articles won't be generated unless date metadata is specified
o Add FILENAME_METADATA setting to support metadata extraction from
filename
o Add gzip_cache plugin to compress common text files into a .gz file
within the same directory as the original file, preventing the server
(e.g. Nginx) from having to compress files during an HTTP call
o Add support for AsciiDoc-formatted content
o Add USE_FOLDER_AS_CATEGORY setting so that feature can be toggled
on/off
o Support arbitrary Jinja template files
o Restore basic functional tests
o New signals: generator_init, get_generators, and
article_generate_preread
3.0 (2012-08-08)
o Refactored the way URLs are handled
o Improved the English documentation
o Fixed packaging using setuptools entrypoints
o Added typogrify support
o Added a way to disable feed generation
o Added support for DIRECT_TEMPLATES
o Allow multiple extensions for content files
o Added LESS support
o Improved the import script
o Added functional tests
o Rsync support in the generated Makefile
o Improved feed support (easily pluggable with Feedburner for instance)
o Added support for abbr in reST
o Fixed a bunch of bugs :-)
2.8 (2012-02-28)
o Dotclear importer
o Allow the usage of Markdown extensions
o Themes are now easily extensible
o Don't output pagination information if there is only one page
o Add a page per author, with all their articles
o Improved the test suite
o Made the themes easier to extend
o Removed Skribit support
o Added a pelican-quickstart script
o Fixed timezone-related issues
o Added some scripts for Windows support
o Date can be specified in seconds
o Never fail when generating posts (skip and continue)
o Allow the use of future dates
o Support having different timezones per language
o Enhanced the documentation
2.7 (2011-06-11)
o Use logging rather than echoing to stdout
o Support custom Jinja filters
o Compatibility with Python 2.5
o Added a theme manager
o Packaged for Debian
o Added draft support
2.6 (2011-03-08)
o Changes in the output directory structure
o Makes templates easier to work with / create
o Added RSS support (was Atom-only)
o Added tag support for the feeds
o Enhance the documentation
o Added another theme (brownstone)
o Added translations
o Added a way to use cleaner URLs with a rewrite url module (or
equivalent)
o Added a tag cloud
o Added an autoreloading feature: the blog is automatically regenerated
each time a modification is detected
o Translate the documentation into French
o Import a blog from an RSS feed
o Pagination support
o Added Skribit support
2.5 (2010-11-20)
o Import from WordPress
o Added some new themes (martyalchin / wide-notmyidea)
o First bug report!
o Linkedin support
o Added a FAQ
o Google Analytics support
o Twitter support
o Use relative URLs, not static ones
2.4 (2010-11-06)
o Minor themes changes
o Add Disqus support (so we have comments)
o Another code refactoring
o Added config settings about pages
o Blog entries can also be generated in PDF
2.3 (2010-10-31)
o Markdown support
2.2 (2010-10-30)
o Prettify output
o Manages static pages as well
2.1 (2010-10-30)
o Make notmyidea the default theme
2.0 (2010-10-30)
o Refactoring to be more extensible
o Change into the setting variables
1.2 (2010-09-28)
o Added a debug option
o Added per-category feeds
o Use filesystem to get dates if no metadata is provided
o Add Pygments support
1.1 (2010-08-19)
o First working version
Author
Justin Mayer
Copyright
2010-2025
4 December 25, 2025 PELICAN(1)