Getting Started with ProperDocs⚓︎
An introductory tutorial!⚓︎
Installation⚓︎
Installation
To install ProperDocs and a basic theme for it, run the following command from the command line:
A note for users who are using uv, add uv in front of pip.
For more details, see the Installation Guide.
Creating a new project⚓︎
Creating a new project
Getting started is super easy. To create a new project, run the following command from the command line:
Take a moment to review the initial project that has been created for you.
There's a single configuration file named properdocs.yml, and a folder named docs that will contain your documentation source files (docs is the default value for the docs_dir configuration setting). Right now the docs folder just contains a single documentation page, named index.md.
ProperDocs comes with a built-in dev-server that lets you preview your documentation as you work on it. Make sure you're in the same directory as the properdocs.yml configuration file, and then start the server by running the properdocs serve command:
$ properdocs serve
INFO - Building documentation...
INFO - Cleaning site directory
INFO - Documentation built in 0.22 seconds
INFO - [15:50:43] Watching paths for changes: 'docs', 'properdocs.yml'
INFO - [15:50:43] Serving on http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Open up http://127.0.0.1:8000/ in your browser, and you'll see the default home page being displayed:
The dev-server also supports auto-reloading, and will rebuild your documentation whenever anything in the configuration file, documentation directory, or theme directory changes.
Open the docs/index.md document in your text editor of choice, change the initial heading to MkLorum, and save your changes. Your browser will auto-reload and you should see your updated documentation immediately.
Now try editing the configuration file: properdocs.yml. Change the site_name setting to MkLorum and save the file.
Your browser should immediately reload, and you'll see your new site name take effect.
NOTE:
The site_name configuration option is the only required option in your configuration file.
Adding Pages⚓︎
Adding Pages
Now add a second page to your documentation:
As our documentation site will include some navigation headers, you may want to edit the configuration file and add some information about the order, title, and nesting of each page in the navigation header by adding a nav setting:
Save your changes and you'll now see a navigation bar with Home and About items on the left as well as Search, Previous, and Next items on the right.
Try the menu items and navigate back and forth between pages. Then click on Search. A search dialog will appear, allowing you to search for any text on any page. Notice that the search results include every occurrence of the search term on the site and links directly to the section of the page in which the search term appears. You get all of that with no effort or configuration on your part!
Theming our Documentation⚓︎
Theming our Documentation
Now change the configuration file to alter how the documentation is displayed by changing the theme. Edit the properdocs.yml file and add a [theme theme setting:
Save your changes, and you'll see the ReadTheDocs theme being used.
Changing the Favicon Icon⚓︎
Changing the Favicon Icon
By default, ProperDocs uses the ProperDocs favicon icon. To use a different icon, create an img subdirectory in the docs directory and copy your custom favicon.ico file to that directory. ProperDocs will automatically detect and use that file as your favicon icon.
Building the Site⚓︎
Building the Site
That's looking good. You're ready to deploy the first pass of your MkLorum documentation. First build the documentation:
This will create a new directory, named site. Take a look inside the directory:
Notice that your source documentation has been output as two HTML files named index.html and about/index.html. You also have various other media that's been copied into the site directory as part of the documentation theme. You even have a sitemap.xml file and properdocs/search_index.json.
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.
If you're using another source code control tool you'll want to check its documentation on how to ignore specific directories.
Other Commands and Options⚓︎
Other Commands and Options
There are various other commands and options available. For a complete list of commands, use the --help flag:
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:
Deploying⚓︎
Deploying
The documentation site that you just built only uses static files so you'll be able to host it from pretty much anywhere. Simply upload the contents of the entire site directory to wherever you're hosting your website from and you're done. For specific instructions on a number of common hosts, see the Deploying your Docs page.
Getting help⚓︎
Getting help
See the User Guide for more complete documentation of all of ProperDocs' features.
To get help with ProperDocs, please use the GitHub discussions or GitHub issues.