mkdocs/docs/index.md

# MkDocs

Project documentation with Markdown.

---

## Overview

MkDocs is a **fast**, **simple** and **downright gorgeous** static site
generator that's geared towards building project documentation. Documentation
source files are written in Markdown, and configured with a single YAML
configuration file.

### Host anywhere

Builds completely static HTML sites that you can host on GitHub pages, Amazon
S3, or anywhere else you choose.

### Great themes available

There's a stack of good looking themes available for MkDocs. Choose between
the built in themes [mkdocs](/user-guide/styling-your-docs/#mkdocs) and
[readthedocs](/user-guide/styling-your-docs/#readthedocs) or check out a list
of 3rd party themes in the [MkDocs wiki](https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/wiki
/MkDocs-Themes) (or better yet, add your own).

### Preview your site as you work

The built-in devserver allows you to preview your documentation as you're
writing it. It will even auto-reload whenever you save any changes, so all you
need to do to see your latest edits is refresh your browser.

### Easy to customize

Get your project documentation looking just the way you want it by customizing
the theme.

---

## Installation

In order to install MkDocs you'll need [Python] installed on your system, as
well as the Python package manager, [pip]. You can check if you have these
already installed like so:

```bash
$ python --version
Python 2.7.2
$ pip --version
pip 1.5.2
```

MkDocs supports Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5.

On Windows we recommend that you install Python and pip with [Chocolatey].

Install the `mkdocs` package using pip:

```bash
pip install mkdocs
```

You should now have the `mkdocs` command installed on your system. Run `mkdocs
--version` to check that everything worked okay.

```bash
$ mkdocs --version
mkdocs, version 0.15.2
```

---

## Getting started

Getting started is super easy.

```bash
mkdocs new my-project
cd my-project
```

Let's take a moment to review the initial project that's been created for us.

![The initial MkDocs layout](img/initial-layout.png)

There's a single configuration file named `mkdocs.yml`, and a folder named
`docs` that will contain our documentation source files. Right now the `docs`
folder just contains a single documentation page, named `index.md`.

MkDocs comes with a built-in webserver that lets you preview your documentation
as you work on it. We start the webserver by making sure we're in the same
directory as the `mkdocs.yml` config file, and then running the `mkdocs serve`
command:

```bash
$ mkdocs serve
Running at: http://127.0.0.1:8000/
```

Open up [http://127.0.0.1:8000/](http://127.0.0.1:8000/) in your browser, and
you'll see the index page being displayed:

![The MkDocs live server](img/screenshot.png)

The webserver also supports auto-reloading, and will rebuild your documentation
whenever anything in the configuration file, documentation directory or theme
directory changes.

Go ahead and edit the `docs/index.md` file now and save the file. Then simply
hit reload in the browser and you'll see your updated documentation.

Now's also a good time to edit the configuration file, `mkdocs.yml`. Change the
`site_name` setting to something else and save the file.

![Editing the config file](img/initial-config.png)

Once you hit reload in the browser you'll see your new site name take effect.

![The site_name setting](img/site-name.png)

## Adding pages

Go ahead and edit the `docs/index.md` document, and change the initial heading to
`MkLorum`, then reload the site in your browser, and you should see the change
take effect immediately.

Let's also add a second page to our documentation:

```bash
curl 'jaspervdj.be/lorem-markdownum/markdown.txt' > docs/about.md
```

We'd like our documentation site to include some navigation headers, so we'll
edit the configuration file and add some information about the order and title
to use for out headers:

```no-highlight
site_name: MkLorum
pages:
- Home: index.md
- About: about.md
```

Refresh the browser and you'll now see a navigation bar with `Home` and `About`
headers.

## Theming our documentation

While we're here can also change the configuration file to alter how the
documentation is displayed. Let's go ahead and change the theme. Edit the
`mkdocs.yml` file to the following:

```no-highlight
site_name: MkLorum
pages:
- Home: index.md
- About: about.md
theme: readthedocs
```

Refresh the browser again, and you'll now see the ReadTheDocs theme being used.

![Screenshot](img/readthedocs.png)

## Building the site

That's looking good. We're ready to deploy the first pass of our `MkLorum`
documentation now. Let's build the documentation.

```bash
mkdocs build
```

This will create a new directory, named `site`. Let's take a look inside the
directory:

```bash
ls site
about css fonts img index.html js
```

Notice that our source documentation has been output as two HTML files named
`index.html` and `about/index.html`. We also have various other media that's
been copied into the `site` directory as part of the documentation theme.

If you're using source code control such as `git` you probably don't want to
check your documentation builds into the repository. Add a line containing
`site/` to your `.gitignore` file.

```bash
echo "site/" >> .gitignore
```

If you're using another source code control you'll want to check it's
documentation on how to ignore specific directories.

After some time, files may be removed from the documentation but they will still
reside in the `site` directory. To remove those stale files, just run mkdocs
with the `--clean` switch.

```bash
mkdocs build --clean
```

## Other Commands and Options

There are various other commands and options available. For a complete list of
commands, use the `--help` flag:

```bash
mkdocs --help
```

To view a list of options available on a given command, use the `--help` flag
with that command. For example, to get a list of all options available for the
`build` command run the following:

```bash
mkdocs build --help
```

## Deploying

The documentation site that we've just built only uses static files so you'll be
able to host it from pretty much anywhere. [GitHub project pages] and [Amazon
S3] are good hosting options. Upload the contents of the entire `site` directory
to wherever you're hosting your website from and you're done. For specific
instructions for a number of common hosts, see the [Deploying your Docs] page.

## Getting help

To get help with MkDocs, please use the [discussion group], [GitHub issues] or
the MkDocs IRC channel `#mkdocs` on freenode.

[Amazon S3]: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/WebsiteHosting.html
[Chocolatey]: https://chocolatey.org/
[discussion group]: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mkdocs
[GitHub issues]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues
[GitHub project pages]: https://help.github.com/articles/creating-project-pages-manually
[pip]: http://pip.readthedocs.org/en/latest/installing.html
[Python]: https://www.python.org/
[Deploying your Docs]: user-guide/deploying-your-docs.md