---
title: creating my blog using Nikola
slug: creating-my-blog-using-nikola
date: 2017-05-30T21:18:45-06:00
tags:
- blog
- documentation
- web
- nikola
draft: false
---
I switched to [Hugo](https://gohugo.io/getting-started/configuration/), see [this post](https://blog.ewpt3ch.dev/posts/mv-blog/)
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I decided to use [Nikola](https://getnikola.com/). It produces a static site from txt files in various formats, I chose [Markdown](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax) to be served directly by nginx on my server. Installation was pretty simple.

First make sure virtualenv is installed

    $ sudo pip install virtualenv
    $ test the install
    $ virtualenv --version
    
Next we install Nikola

    $ virtualenv nikola
    $ source nikola/bin/activate
    $ pip install --upgrade "Nikola[extras]"
    Successfully installed Nikola

Now we have the tool installed, to exit the nikola environment use deactivate, everytime I blog use "source ~/nikola/bin/activate". Next we setup the site, without demo pages.

    $ nikola init name_my_site
    answer the questions in the wizard
    edit path_to_blog/conf.py PAGES, POSTS, and COMPILERS to setup markdown
    add a post
    $ nikola new_post -e
    rebuild the site
    $ nikola build

Now we have a site that is ready for deployment to a server.  Things that are coming later: scripts to enter and exit the virtualenv and deploy the posts automatically.