Pelican

4.12.0 verified Fri May 01 auth: no python

Pelican is a static site generator written in Python. It supports Markdown and reStructuredText content, offers theming via Jinja2 templates, and generates static HTML files suitable for deployment on GitHub Pages, Netlify, etc. Current version is 4.12.0, with releases roughly twice a year.

pip install pelican

Common errors

error ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pelican' ↓

cause Pelican is not installed in the current Python environment.

fix

Run pip install pelican.

error TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable ↓

cause Often caused by a misconfigured `PAGE_ORDER_BY` or `ARTICLE_ORDER_BY` setting that references a nonexistent metadata field.

fix

Verify that the order key exists in all your pages/articles or set a default.

error pelican: error: unrecognized arguments: -r -l ↓

cause The `-r` (auto-reload) and `-l` (launch server) flags were merged into `--autoreload` or `-r` in Pelican 4.10+.

fix

Use pelican -r -l still works, but if you see this error, update Pelican. Alternatively use pelican --autoreload --listen.

Warnings

breaking Pelican dropped support for Python 3.8 in version 4.12.0. Python 3.11 or later is required. ↓

fix Upgrade to Python 3.11+.

deprecated The `pelican-quickstart` script is deprecated and may be removed in a future release. Use `pelican quickstart` subcommand instead. ↓

fix Replace `pelican-quickstart` with `pelican quickstart`.

gotcha Settings are case-sensitive. Common mistake: using `SITEURL` instead of `SITEURL` (correct), but many users misspell it. ↓

fix Check your pelicanconf.py for correct spelling of settings.

gotcha If you upgrade from Pelican < 4.10 to >= 4.10, the default summary generation changed: `SUMMARY_MAX_PARAGRAPHS` now defaults to None (full content), and `SUMMARY_MAX_LENGTH` also changed. Check your summaries. ↓

fix Explicitly set `SUMMARY_MAX_PARAGRAPHS` and `SUMMARY_MAX_LENGTH` in your config if you rely on them.

Install

pip install pelican[markdown]

Imports

Pelican
wrong
```
import pelican
```
correct
```
from pelican import Pelican
```
Pelican is a class; direct import of the module doesn't give access to the main class.

read_settings

from pelican.settings import read_settings

Generator

from pelican.generators import Generator

Quickstart

Basic usage: read settings from a configuration file and run Pelican to generate the site.

from pelican import Pelican
from pelican.settings import read_settings

settings = read_settings('pelicanconf.py')
pelican = Pelican(settings)
pelican.run()

# Or use the command line:
# pelican content -s pelicanconf.py -o output