Creating your site¶

After you’ve installed Material for MkDocs, you can bootstrap your project documentation using the mkdocs executable. Go to the directory where you want your project to be located and enter:

mkdocs new .

Alternatively, if you’re running Material for MkDocs from within Docker, use:

docker run --rm -it -v ${PWD}:/docs squidfunk/mkdocs-material new .

docker run --rm -it -v "%cd%":/docs squidfunk/mkdocs-material new .

This will create the following structure:

.
├─ docs/
│  └─ index.md
└─ mkdocs.yml

Configuration¶

Minimal configuration¶

Simply set the site_name and add the following lines to mkdocs.yml to enable the theme:

site_name: My site
site_url: https://mydomain.org/mysite
theme:
  name: material

The site_url setting is important for a number of reasons. By default, MkDocs will assume that your site is hosted at the root of your domain. This is not the case, for example, when publishing to GitHub pages - unless you use a custom domain. Another reason is that some of the plugins require the site_url to be set, so you should always do this.

Advanced configuration¶

Material for MkDocs comes with many configuration options. The setup section explains in great detail how to configure and customize colors, fonts, icons and much more:

Furthermore, see the list of supported Markdown extensions that are natively integrated with Material for MkDocs, delivering an unprecedented low-effort technical writing experience.

Templates¶

If you want to jump start a new project, you can use one of our growing collection of templates:

Previewing as you write¶

MkDocs includes a live preview server, so you can preview your changes as you write your documentation. The server will automatically rebuild the site upon saving. Start it with:

mkdocs serve # (1)

If you’re running Material for MkDocs from within Docker, use:

docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000 -v ${PWD}:/docs squidfunk/mkdocs-material

docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000 -v "%cd%":/docs squidfunk/mkdocs-material

Point your browser to localhost:8000 and you should see:

Building your site¶

When you’re finished editing, you can build a static site from your Markdown files with:

mkdocs build

If you’re running Material for MkDocs from within Docker, use:

docker run --rm -it -v ${PWD}:/docs squidfunk/mkdocs-material build

docker run --rm -it -v "%cd%":/docs squidfunk/mkdocs-material build

The contents of this directory make up your project documentation. There’s no need for operating a database or server, as it is completely self-contained. The site can be hosted on GitHub Pages, GitLab Pages, a CDN of your choice or your private web space.

If you intend to distribute your documentation as a set of files to be read from a local filesystem rather than a web server (such as in a .zip file), please read the notes about building for offline usage.