Installing Pelican

Pelican currently runs best on Python >=3.11; earlier versions of Python are not supported.

Once Pelican is installed, you can run pelican --help to see basic usage options. For more detail, refer to the Publish section.

You can install Pelican via several different methods.

Recommended method: Pip User Install

To install Pelican via Pip:

python3 -m pip install --user "pelican[markdown]"

Or, if you do not plan to use Markdown, you can omit the [markdown] suffix:

python3 -m pip install --user pelican

Alternate method 1: Pipx

Pipx lets you execute binaries from Python packages in isolated environments. You can install Pipx by following its documentation. After Pipx is installed, you can install Pelican via:

pipx install "pelican[markdown]"

Alternate method 2: uv

Like Pipx, uv allows you to install tools in isolated environments. If you have uv installed, you can install Pelican via:

uv tool install "pelican[markdown]"

Alternate method 3: Virtual Environment

If you prefer to manually manage a virtual environment, you can create a virtual environment for Pelican via venv before installing Pelican:

python3 -m venv ~/virtualenvs/pelican
source ~/virtualenvs/pelican/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install "pelican[markdown]"

Alternatively, if you have the project source, you can replace the last command with the following to install Pelican using the setuptools method:

cd path-to-Pelican-source
python3 -m pip install .

If you have Git installed and prefer to install the latest bleeding-edge version of Pelican rather than a stable release, use the following command:

python3 -m pip install -e "git+https://github.com/getpelican/pelican.git#egg=pelican"

To exit the virtual environment, type deactivate.

Optional packages

If you plan on using Markdown as a markup format, you can install Pelican with Markdown support:

python3 -m pip install --user "pelican[markdown]"

Typographical enhancements can be enabled in your settings file, but first the requisite Typogrify library must be installed:

python3 -m pip install --user typogrify

If you are using Pipx, you can inject packages into the Pipx-managed virtual environment. For example, to add Typogrify:

pipx inject pelican typogrify

To use uv to install Pelican with additional extra packages, use the following example command, which like above will also install Typogrify:

uv tool install --with typogrify "pelican[markdown]"

Dependencies

When Pelican is installed, the following dependent Python packages should be automatically installed without any action on your part:

  • feedgenerator, to generate the Atom feeds

  • jinja2, for templating support

  • pygments, for syntax highlighting

  • docutils, for supporting reStructuredText as an input format

  • blinker, an object-to-object and broadcast signaling system

  • unidecode, for ASCII transliterations of Unicode text utilities

  • MarkupSafe, for a markup-safe string implementation

  • python-dateutil, to read the date metadata

Upgrading

If you installed a stable Pelican release via Pip and wish to upgrade to the latest stable release, you can do so by adding --upgrade:

python3 -m pip install --upgrade pelican

If you installed Pelican via setuptools or the bleeding-edge method, perform the same step to install the most recent version.

If you installed with Pipx, upgrade via:

pipx upgrade pelican

If you installed with uv, upgrade via:

uv tool upgrade pelican

Kickstart your site

Once Pelican has been installed, you can create a skeleton project via the pelican-quickstart command, which begins by asking some questions about your site:

pelican-quickstart

If run inside an activated virtual environment, pelican-quickstart will look for an associated project path inside $VIRTUAL_ENV/.project. If that file exists and contains a valid directory path, the new Pelican project will be saved at that location. Otherwise, the default is the current working directory. To set the new project path on initial invocation, use: pelican-quickstart --path /your/desired/directory

Once you finish answering all the questions, your project will consist of the following hierarchy (except for pages — shown in parentheses below — which you can optionally add yourself if you plan to create non-chronological content):

yourproject/
├── content
│   └── (pages)
├── output
├── tasks.py
├── Makefile
├── pelicanconf.py       # Main settings file
└── publishconf.py       # Settings to use when ready to publish

The next step is to begin to adding content to the content folder that has been created for you.