Themes¶
There is a community-managed repository of 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 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
├── 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.
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. |
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 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') }}
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 ( |
articles_next_page |
The next page of articles ( |
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 ( |
dates_next_page |
The next page of articles, ordered by date,
ascending ( |
page_name |
‘index’ – 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 ( |
articles_next_page |
The next page of articles ( |
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 ( |
dates_next_page |
The next page of articles, ordered by date,
ascending ( |
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 ( |
articles_next_page |
The next page of articles ( |
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 ( |
dates_next_page |
The next page of articles, ordered by date,
ascending ( |
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 ( |
You can see an example of how to use period in the “simple” theme period_archives.html template.
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_num |
The same tuple as described in
|
url |
The URL to the period archive page, e.g.
|
save_as |
The path to the save location of the period archive
page file, e.g. |
articles |
A list of Article objects that fall under the time period. |
dates |
Same list as |
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 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. |
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:
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 %}
On the first line, we extend the
base.html
template from thesimple
theme, so we don’t have to rewrite the entire file.On the third line, we open the
head
block which has already been defined in thesimple
theme.On the fourth line, the function
super()
keeps the content previously inserted in thehead
block.On the fifth line, we append a stylesheet to the page.
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
.