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Added documentation on new advanced blog settings

2023-11-23 11:41:19 +01:00

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Setting up a blog

Material for MkDocs makes it very easy to build a blog, either as a sidecar to your documentation or standalone. Focus on your content while the engine does all the heavy lifting, automatically generating archive and category indexes, post slugs, configurable pagination and more.

Check out our blog, which is created with the new built-in blog plugin!

Configuration

Built-in blog plugin

The built-in blog plugin adds support for building a blog from a folder of posts, which are annotated with dates and other structured data. First, add the following lines to mkdocs.yml:

plugins:
  - blog

For a list of all settings, please consult the plugin documentation.

Advanced settings :material-alert-decagram:

The following advanced settings are currently reserved to our [sponsors] Insiders. They are entirely optional, and don't affect the functionality of the blog, but can be helpful for customizations:

We'll add more settings here, as we discover new use cases.

RSS

The built-in blog plugin integrates seamlessly with the RSS plugin, which provides a simple way to add an RSS feed to your blog (or to your whole documentation). Install it with pip:

pip install mkdocs-rss-plugin

Then, add the following lines to mkdocs.yml:

plugins:
  - rss:
      match_path: blog/posts/.* # (1)!
      date_from_meta:
        as_creation: date
      categories:
        - categories
        - tags # (2)!

The RSS plugin allows to filter for URLs to be included in the feed. In this example, only blog posts will be part of the feed.
If you want to include a post's categories as well as its tags in the feed, add both categories and tags here.

The following configuration options are supported:

: This option specifies whether the plugin is enabled when building your project. If you want to speed up local builds, you can use an [environment variable]:

``` yaml
plugins:
  - rss:
      enabled: !ENV [CI, false]
```

: This option specifies which pages should be included in the feed. For example, to only include blog posts in the feed, use the following regular expression:

``` yaml
plugins:
  - rss:
      match_path: blog/posts/.*
```

: This option specifies which front matter property should be used as a creation date of a page in the feed. It's recommended to use the date property:

``` yaml
plugins:
  - rss:
      date_from_meta:
        as_creation: date
```

: This option specifies which front matter properties are used as categories as part of the feed. If you use categories and tags, add both with the following lines:

``` yaml
plugins:
  - rss:
      categories:
        - categories
        - tags
```

: This option specifies the anchor at which comments for a post or page can be found. If you've integrated a comment system, add the following lines:

``` yaml
plugins:
  - rss:
      comments_path: "#__comments"
```

Material for MkDocs will automatically add the necessary metadata to your site which will make the RSS feed discoverable by browsers and feed readers. Note that the RSS plugin comes with several other configuration options. For further information, see the documentation.

Usage

Writing your first post

After you've successfully set up the built-in blog plugin, it's time to write your first post. The plugin doesn't assume any specific directory structure, so you're completely free in how you organize your posts, as long as they are all located inside the posts directory:

.
├─ docs/
│  └─ blog/
│     ├─ posts/
│     │  └─ hello-world.md # (1)!
│     └─ index.md
└─ mkdocs.yml

If you'd like to arrange posts differently, you're free to do so. The URLs are built from the format specified in post_url_format and the titles and dates of posts, no matter how they are organized inside the posts directory.

Create a new file called hello-world.md and add the following lines:

---
draft: true # (1)!
date: 2023-01-31 # (2)!
categories:
  - Hello
  - World
---

# Hello world!
...

If you mark a post as a draft, a red marker appears next to the post date on index pages. When the site is built, drafts are not included in the output. This behavior can be changed, e.g. for rendering drafts when building deploy previews.
If you wish to provide multiple dates, you can use the following syntax, allowing you to define a date when you last updated the blog post + further custom dates you can add to the template:
```
---
date:
  created: 2022-01-31
  updated: 2022-02-02
---

# Hello world!
```
Note that the creation date must be set under date.created, as each blog post must have a creation date set.

When you spin up the live preview server, you should be greeted by your first post! You'll also realize, that archive and category indexes have been automatically generated for you.

Adding an excerpt

The blog index, as well as archive and category indexes can either list the entire content of each post, or excerpts of posts. An excerpt can be created by adding a  separator after the first few paragraphs of a post:

# Hello world!

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla et euismod
nulla. Curabitur feugiat, tortor non consequat finibus, justo purus auctor
massa, nec semper lorem quam in massa.

<!-- more -->
...

When the built-in blog plugin generates all indexes, the content before the excerpt separator is automatically extracted, allowing the user to start reading a post before deciding to jump in.

Adding authors

In order to add a little more personality to your posts, you can associate each post with one or multiple authors. First, create the .authors.yml file in your blog directory, and add an author:

authors:
  squidfunk:
    name: Martin Donath
    description: Creator
    avatar: https://github.com/squidfunk.png

The .authors.yml file associates each author with an identifier (in this example squidfunk), which can then be used in posts. The following properties are available for each author:

: This property must define a name for the author. The name is displayed in the left sidebar of each post as part of the author info.

: This property can be used to add a short description for the author, e.g. the role or profession of the author, or any other title.

: This property must point to a valid image URL, internal or external, and is used as part of posts and excerpts as the author's avatar.

Now, you can assign one or more authors to a post by referencing their identifiers in the front matter of the Markdown file under the authors property. For each author, a small profile is rendered in the left sidebar of each post, as well as in post excerpts on index pages:

---
date: 2023-01-31
authors:
  - squidfunk
    ...
---

# Hello world!
...

Adding categories

Categories are an excellent way for grouping your posts thematically on dedicated index pages. This way, a user interested in a specific topic can explore all of your posts on this topic. Make sure categories are enabled and add them to the front matter categories property:

---
date: 2023-01-31
categories:
  - Hello
  - World
---

# Hello world!
...

If you want to save yourself from typos when typing out categories, you can define your desired categories in mkdocs.yml as part of the categories_allowed configuration option. The built-in blog plugin will stop the build if a category is not found within the list.

Adding tags

Besides categories, the built-in blog plugin also integrates with the built-in tags plugin. If you add tags in the front matter tags property as part of a post, the post is linked from the tags index:

---
date: 2023-01-31
tags:
  - Foo
  - Bar
---

# Hello world!
...

As usual, the tags are rendered above the main headline and posts are linked on the tags index page, if configured. Note that posts are, as pages, only linked with their titles.

Changing the slug

Slugs are the shortened description of your post used in the URL. They are automatically generated, but you can specify a custom slug for a page:

---
slug: hello-world
---

# Hello there world!
...

Related links offer the perfect way to prominently add a further reading section to your post that is included in the left sidebar, guiding the user to other destinations of your documentation. Use the front matter links property to add related links to a post:

---
date: 2023-01-31
links:
  - plugins/search.md
  - insiders/index.md#how-to-become-a-sponsor
---

# Hello world!
...

You can use the exact same syntax as for the nav section in mkdocs.yml, which means you can set explicit titles for links, add external links and even use nesting:

---
date: 2023-01-31
links:
  - plugins/search.md
  - insiders/index.md#how-to-become-a-sponsor
  - Nested section:
    - External link: https://example.com
    - setup/setting-up-site-search.md
---

# Hello world!
...

If you look closely, you'll realize that you can even use an anchor to link to a specific section of a document, extending the possibilities of the nav syntax in mkdocs.yml. The built-in blog plugin resolves the anchor and sets the title of the anchor as a subtitle of the related link.

Note that all links must be relative to docs_dir, as is also the case for the nav setting.

Linking from and to posts

While post URLs are dynamically computed, the built-in blog plugin ensures that all links from and to posts and a post's assets are correct. If you want to link to a post, just use the path to the Markdown file as a link reference (links must be relative):

[Hello World!](blog/posts/hello-world.md)

Linking from a post to a page, e.g. the index, follows the same method:

[Blog](../index.md)

All assets inside the posts directory are copied to the blog/assets folder when the site is being built. Of course, you can also reference assets from posts outside of the posts directory. The built-in blog plugin ensures that all links are correct.

Setting the reading time

When enabled, the readtime package is used to compute the expected reading time of each post, which is rendered as part of the post and post excerpt. Nowadays, many blogs show reading times, which is why the built-in blog plugin offers this capability as well.

Sometimes, however, the computed reading time might not feel accurate, or result in odd and unpleasant numbers. For this reason, reading time can be overridden and explicitly set with the front matter readtime property for a post:

---
date: 2023-01-31
readtime: 15
---

# Hello world!
...

This will disable automatic reading time computation.

Setting defaults

If you have a lot of posts, it might feel redundant to define all of the above for each post. Luckily, the built-in meta plugin allows to set default front matter properties per folder. You can group your posts by categories, or authors, and add a .meta.yml file to set common properties:

.
├─ docs/
│  └─ blog/
│     ├─ posts/
│     ├─ .meta.yml # (1)!
│     └─ index.md
└─ mkdocs.yml

As already noted, you can also place a .meta.yml file in nested folders of the posts directory. This file then can define all front matter properties that are valid in posts, e.g.:
```
authors:
  - squidfunk
categories:
  - Hello
  - World
```

Note that order matters – the built-in meta plugin must be defined before the blog plugin in mkdocs.yml, so that all set defaults are correctly picked up by the built-in blog plugin:

plugins:
  - meta
  - blog

Lists and dictionaries in .meta.yml files are merged and deduplicated with the values defined for a post, which means you can define common properties in .meta.yml and then add specific properties or overrides for each post.

Adding pages

Besides posts, it's also possible to add static pages to your blog by listing the pages in the nav section of mkdocs.yml. All generated indexes are included after the last specified page. For example, to add a page on the authors of the blog, add the following to mkdocs.yml:

nav:
  - Blog:
    - blog/index.md
    - blog/authors.md
      ...

Customization

Custom index pages

If you want to add custom content to automatically generated archive and category indexes, e.g. to add a category description prior to the list of posts, you can manually create the category page in the same location where the built-in blog plugin would create it:

.
├─ docs/
│  └─ blog/
│     ├─ category/
│     │  └─ hello.md # (1)!
│     ├─ posts/
│     └─ index.md
└─ mkdocs.yml

The easiest way is to first add the category to the blog post, then take the URL generated by the built-in blog plugin and create the file at the corresponding location in the [blog_dir][this is configurable] folder.

Note that the shown directory listing is based on the default configuration. If you specify different values for the following options, be sure to adjust the path accordingly:
- [blog_dir][this is configurable]
- categories_url_format
- categories_slugify

You can now add arbitrary content to the newly created file, or set specific front matter properties for this page, e.g. to change the page description:

---
description: Nullam urna elit, malesuada eget finibus ut, ac tortor.
---

# Hello
...

All post excerpts belonging to the category are automatically appended.

Overriding templates

The built-in blog plugin is built on the same basis as Material for MkDocs, which means you can override all templates used for the blog by using theme extension as usual.

The following templates are added by the built-in blog plugin:

blog.html – Template for blog, archive and category index
blog-post.html – Template for blog post

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