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 2.7.x or Python 3.3+ by running the following command in your
preferred terminal, prefixing with "sudo" if permissions warrant:

   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.,
"http://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 site 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 generated output
directory and run the following command to launch Pelican's web
server:

   pelican --listen

Preview your site by navigating to http://localhost:8000/ in your
browser.

Continue reading the other documentation sections for more detail, and
check out the Pelican wiki's Tutorials page for links to community-
published tutorials.


Footnotes
=========

[1] You can help localize default fields by installing the
    optional tzlocal module.
