PELICAN-THEMING(1)

NAME
pelican-theming - How to create themes for Pelican

To generate its HTML output, Pelican uses the 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.

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
    ├── period_archives.html  // to display time-period 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
    ├── tag.html              // processed for each tag
    └── tags.html             // must list all the tags. Can be a tag cloud.

•   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.

•   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.
drafts | The list of draft articles
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 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 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 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') }}

  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.

You can see an example of how to use period in the "simple" theme period_archives.html template.

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 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 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:

FEED_ATOM
FEED_RSS
FEED_ALL_ATOM
FEED_ALL_RSS
CATEGORY_FEED_ATOM
CATEGORY_FEED_RSS
AUTHOR_FEED_ATOM
AUTHOR_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.

AUTHOR
The Pelican contributors

COPYRIGHT
2021 – present, Justin Mayer, Alexis Metaireau, and contributors