One of the most frequent questions I get about Nikola
is "but how do I create a site that's not a blog?". And of course, that's because the
documentation is heavily blog-oriented. This document will change that ;-)
Since it started, Nikola has had the capabilities to create generic sites. For example,
Nikola's own site is a fairly generic one. Let's go
step by step on how you can do something like that.
As usual when starting a nikola site, you start with nikola init which creates a
empty semi-configured site:
$ nikola init mysite
Created empty site at mysite.
Then we go into the new mysite folder, and make the needed changes in the conf.py
configuration file:
############################################### Configuration, please edit############################################### Data about this siteBLOG_AUTHOR="Roberto Alsina"BLOG_TITLE="Not a Blog"# This is the main URL for your site. It will be used# in a prominent linkSITE_URL="http://notablog.ralsina.me"BLOG_EMAIL="ralsina@kde.org"BLOG_DESCRIPTION="This is a demo site (not a blog) for Nikola."## Some things in the middle you don't really need to change...#post_pages=(("pages/*.txt","","story.tmpl",False),)
And now we are ready to create our first page:
$ nikola new_post -p
Creating New Post
-----------------
Enter title: index
Your post's text is at: pages/index.txt
We can now build and preview our site:
$ nikola build
Scanning posts.done!
. render_site:output/categories/index.html
. render_sources:output/index.txt
. render_rss:output/rss.xml
:
:
: [Much more of the same]
$ nikola serve
Serving HTTP on 127.0.0.1 port 8000 ...
.. title: index.. slug: index.. date: 2013/03/01 10:26:17.. tags:.. link:.. description:Write your post here.
Title is the page title, slug is the name of the generated HTML file
(in this case it would be index.html) the date doesn't matter much in
not-blogs, same for tags and link. Description is useful for SEO purposes
if you care for that.
And below, the content. By default you are expected to use reStructured text but
Nikola supports a ton of formats, including Markdown, plain HTML, BBCode,
Wiki, and Textile.
So, let's give the page a nicer title, and some fake content. Since the default
Nikola theme (called "site") is based on bootstrap
you can use anything you like from it:
.. title: Welcome To The Fake Site.. slug: index.. date: 2013/03/01 10:26:17.. tags:.. link:.. description: Fake Site version 1, welcome page!..class:: hero-unit span6
..admonition:: This is a Fake Site
It pretends to be about things, but is really just an example.
So, don't click this button, it leads nowhere.
..class:: btn
Click Me!
..class:: span5
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris non nunc turpis.
Phasellus a ullamcorper leo. Sed fringilla dapibus orci eu ornare. Quisque
gravida quam a mi dignissim consequat. Morbi sed iaculis mi. Vivamus ultrices
mattis euismod. Mauris aliquet magna eget mauris volutpat a egestas leo rhoncus.
In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Ut sed mi arcu. Nullam id massa eu orci
convallis accumsan. Nunc faucibus sodales justo ac ornare. In eu congue eros.
Pellentesque iaculis risus urna. Proin est lorem, scelerisque non elementum at,
semper vel velit. Phasellus consectetur orci vel tortor tempus imperdiet. Class
aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos
himenaeos.
[And more in the same vein]
And that's it. You will want to change the SIDEBAR_LINKS option to create a reasonable
"menu" for your site, you will want to hack the theme (check nikola help bootswatch_theme
for a quick & dirty solution), and you may want to add a blog later on, for company news
or whatever.
You can see the finished site in http://notablog.ralsina.me and its full configuration in
//ralsina.me/listings/notablog/conf.py.html
Reminded me of Year Zero, which is a very good thing.
Very interesting point of view about a first contact, even if it's of course, in may ways, a transparent nerd self-realization fantasy.
Specially loved the attempts at describing games just on the edge of incomprehensibility. If they were made less understandable, there's no plot. If they were more human, then it's not fun.
Going to read the extra free content available at the book's site.