This is a template repository for anyone that wants to use the MkDocs Material Theme.
To get started, first clone this template by clicking on the Green button labeled Use this template.
On the new screen, give your repository a name and make sure to check Include all branches. This will make sure that the gh-pages branch is included, or otherwhise publishing the docs to GitHub Pages could cause errors (See Troubleshooting).
Note
GitHub changed how you define from where it takes the pages to build. You are now able to define both a branch and a specific folder from where GitHub would take the files to then deploy them on GitHub Pages.
You can read more about this here.
To create new pages, just add new markdown files to the docs folder of the repository and edit them.
MkDocs will then turn those into static HTML pages once you build or deploy the pages.
The template also has some pre-made settings for your convenience to help you with creating documentation much easier.
In the mkdocs.yml will you find many settings that you can alter. Please check the comments and the links they have for more info.
It also contains some extensions that might be useful including:
- Admonition
- CodeHilite
- ToC
- PyMdown Extensions
You're free to add, edit or remove any extension at your own discretion, but keep in mind that some expansions might cause compatibility issues with others or require to be downloaded first.
For that, alter the requirements.txt if you also deploy pages using GitHub Actions or Netlify
To build pages (locally) can you use the mkdocs build command in your prefered command prompt.
Note that for the successful execution of this command you have to...
- ...be in the folder that contains the
mkdocs.yml - ...have Python 3.7 installed
- ...have MkDocs and all required dependencies such as Material for MkDocs installed.
Note that Material for MkDocs automatically downloads MkDocs and also certain extensions such as the PyMdown Extensions.
MkDocs would now build the HTML in the defined configuration folder for you to use.
If you want to publish the pages on GitHub Pages can you use the premade workflow for this.
This workflow will setup Python, download Material for MkDocs and all its dependencies and deploy the pages to the gh-pages branch to then be viewable under <username>.github.io/<repository> (unless you defined a specific CNAME through a CNAME file in the docs folder).
Note that in order for this to work will you need to have a gh-pages branch already made.
Netlify is an amazing service to build and deploy pages. This template comes with a runtime.txt which is used by Netlify to determine the Python version used (They use an old version of Python... Don't ask why).
For more information, please check out their website.
The repository contains a dependabot.yml file inside the .github folder which allows automatic updates through GitHub's Dependabot.
It is configured to target both Python dependencies (inside the requirements.txt) and GitHub Actions dependencies, to make sure bot are updated accordingly.
Note that it is configured by default to add the Type: Update (Dependency) label and also the Target: Python (pip) label for Python and Target: GitHub Actions label for GitHub Actions Dependencies.
Those labels don't exist by default so you have to either create them, or alter the ones in the dependabot.yml (You can also just remove the labels sections).
The deploy action gives me an error when deploying. What is the issue?
There can be many issues but the most common ones are that you either don't have a gh-pages branch set or that the requirements.txt file is missing or its content is invalid.
Can I alter the overall style of the pages?
Yes. Material for MkDocs supports Theme extensions, meaning you can override specific parts of a theme by providing the particular file in a folder and defining this folder as the custom_dir one in the mkdocs.yml.
This template ships with a theme folder that can be used for that and you can just uncomment the aforementioned line in the YAML file.
A big thank you goes to the following people/groups:
- MkDocs for providing the software, to generate documentation.
- squidfunk for the MkDocs Material Theme.
- facelessuser for the PyMdown Extensions.
This template is served under the MIT license.
Read the LICENSE file for more info.