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 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 toFalse
,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 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.
- 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}
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 glob patterns. Files and directories matching any of these patterns will be ignored by the processor. For example, the default
['.#*']
will ignore emacs lock files, and['__pycache__']
would ignore Python 3’s bytecode caches.
- MARKDOWN = {...}
Extra configuration settings for the Markdown processor. Refer to the Python Markdown documentation’s Options section for a complete list of supported options. The
extensions
option will be automatically computed from theextension_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.
- PLUGIN_PATHS = []
A list of directories where to look for plugins. See 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 usehttp://
. 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 inPAGE_PATHS
orARTICLE_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 unlessSTATIC_PATHS
contains a directory that is also inARTICLE_PATHS
orPAGE_PATHS
. If you are trying to publish your site’s source files, consider using theOUTPUT_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
, andSTATIC_CREATE_LINKS
isFalse
, 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 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
andcode
tags. This requires that Typogrify version 2.0.4 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. Thedefault
setting does not handle en-dashes and converts double-hyphens into em-dashes. Theoldschool
setting renders both en-dashes and em-dashes when it sees two (--
) and three (---
) hyphen characters, respectively. Theoldschool_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 toSUMMARY_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 thewhat
capturing group. For details see Linking to internal content.
- PYGMENTS_RST_OPTIONS = []
A list of default Pygments settings for your reStructuredText code blocks. See Syntax highlighting 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.
If set to
'mtime'
, the modification time of the file is checked.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:
slug
date
lang
author
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 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 orbasename
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 fromSLUGIFY_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 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 thedatetime.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 toDEFAULT_DATE_FORMAT
. If you need to maintain multiple languages with different date formats, you can set theDATE_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, you can use the
-
character between%
and the format character to remove any leading zeros. For example,%d/%m/%Y
will output01/01/2014
whereas%-d/%-m/%Y
will result in1/1/2014
.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 theLOCALE
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 or on Unix/Linux, use the
locale -a
command; see manpage locale(1) for more information.
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 inTHEME_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. 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 (?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 toFalse
, 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
.
{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 toDEFAULT_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
orFalse
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
orFalse
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.
{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 (usereversed-
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 asARTICLE_ORDER_BY
. The default value,'basename'
will sort pages by their basename.
Themes¶
Creating Pelican themes is addressed in a dedicated section (see Themes). 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 inTHEME_TEMPLATES_OVERRIDES
first, then the theme’stemplates/
.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:
notmyidea
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:
The hash or modification time information for the file from a previous build are loaded from a cache file if
LOAD_CONTENT_CACHE
isTrue
. These files are stored in theCACHE_PATH
directory. If the file has no record in the cache file, it is read as usual.The file is checked according to
CHECK_MODIFIED_METHOD
:If set to
'mtime'
, the modification time of the file is checked.If set to a name of a function provided by the
hashlib
module, e.g.'md5'
, the file hash is checked.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.
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.
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
isTrue
.
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 Métaireau"
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 Ziadé", "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"