Getting Started

Welcome to Zerodown! This guide will walk you through installing Zerodown and creating your first static site.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following installed:

🐍 Python 3.7 or higher
📦 Pip (Python's package installer, usually included with Python)

We recommend using a Python virtual environment to manage dependencies for your project.

Installation

You can install Zerodown directly from source using pip.

Clone the repository (replace yourusername/zerodown.git with the actual repository URL if needed):

    git clone https://github.com/yourusername/zerodown.git
    cd zerodown

Install the package in editable mode (-e) along with its dependencies:

    # Make sure you are in the 'zerodown' directory cloned above
    pip install -e .

This makes the `zerodown` command available in your environment.

Creating Your Site

The easiest way to start is using the init command.

Initialize a new site: Choose a template (basic, blog, portfolio). This command creates a new directory with the template files and a default config.yaml.

    # Create a site named 'my-awesome-site' using the basic template
    zerodown init my-awesome-site --template basic

    # Or create a blog
    # zerodown init my-blog --template blog

Navigate to your site directory:

    cd my-awesome-site

Add Content: Place your Markdown files (.md) inside the content/ directory. You can create subdirectories for organization (e.g., content/posts/, content/projects/). See the Content Structure page for more details.

Building Your Site

Once you have added content, build the static HTML files:

# Run from within your site directory ('my-awesome-site')
zerodown build

Or, if you haven't installed Zerodown globally, run from the main Zerodown source directory:

# Run from the main Zerodown project directory
python zd_cli.py build path/to/my-awesome-site

This generates the final site in the _site/ directory (or the directory specified by output_dir in your config).

Previewing Locally

To see your site before deploying, use the serve command:

# Run from within your site directory ('my-awesome-site')
zerodown serve

Or, from the main Zerodown source directory:

# Run from the main Zerodown project directory
python zd_cli.py serve path/to/my-awesome-site

This starts a local web server (usually at http://localhost:8000). Open that address in your browser. The server automatically rebuilds the site when it detects changes to your content or templates.