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 of the article or page |
|
Publication date (e.g., |
|
Modification date (e.g., |
|
Content tags, separated by commas |
|
Content keywords, separated by commas (HTML content only) |
|
Content category (one only — not multiple) |
|
Identifier used in URLs and translations |
|
Content author, when there is only one |
|
Content authors, when there are multiple |
|
Brief description of content for index pages |
|
Content language ID ( |
|
If content is a translation of another ( |
|
Content status: |
|
Name of template to use to generate content (without extension) |
|
Save content to this relative file path |
|
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:
<html>
<head>
<title>My super title</title>
<meta name="tags" content="thats, awesome" />
<meta name="date" content="2012-07-09 22:28" />
<meta name="modified" content="2012-07-10 20:14" />
<meta name="category" content="yeah" />
<meta name="authors" content="Alexis Métaireau, Conan Doyle" />
<meta name="summary" content="Short version for index and feeds" />
</head>
<body>
This is the content of my super blog post.
</body>
</html>
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<title>.*)'
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:
![Alt Text]({static}/images/han.jpg)
[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
![Icon]({attach}icons/icon.png)
![Photo]({attach}photo.jpg)
[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
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:
.. 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:
```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.
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 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 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.
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 |
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
|
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 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
.
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.