Install Nikola on Windows 10

Miki

2016-06-30

Thanks to the fact Nikola site generator is written in Python scripting language, it should run on any major operating system. The installation process might vary depending on the system though. Here, I'm going to share how I've managed to install Nikola on Windows 10.

Nikola is powered by Python, so first you need to make sure Python is installed on your computer.
To install Nikola, you will need a command-line console. Even though the default Windows console (cmd) should be perfectly suitable, I recommend to get ConEmu, because it's configurable, feature-rich and looks much better.
The best way to install Nikola is to use pip in a virtualenv. So, open console in admin mode at desired path and install virtualenv.
```
$ py -m pip install virtualenv
$ virtualenv nikola
$ cd nikola
```
Download packages lxml and Pillow compiled for Windows and for your installed version of Python. Copy them into nikola folder and install them using pip. I downloaded the packages here.
```
$ pip install lxml-3.6.1-cp35-cp35m-win32.whl
$ pip install Pillow-3.3.0-cp35-cp35m-win32.whl
```
Finally, install Nikola with "extras" option.
```
$ pip install --upgrade "Nikola[extras]"
```

Now, you should have Nikola installed and ready to use. You can get all available commands by typing nikola help.

$ nikola help
Nikola is a tool to create static websites and blogs. For full documentation and more information,
please visit https://getnikola.com/

Available commands:
  nikola auto                 builds and serves a site; automatically detects site changes
  nikola bootswatch_theme     given a swatch name from bootswatch.com and a parent theme, creates a custom theme
  nikola build                run tasks
  nikola check                check links and files in the generated site
  nikola clean                clean action / remove targets
  nikola console              start an interactive Python console with access to your site
  nikola deploy               deploy the site
  nikola doit_auto            automatically execute tasks when a dependency changes
  nikola dumpdb               dump dependency DB
  nikola forget               clear successful run status from internal DB
  nikola github_deploy        deploy the site to GitHub Pages
  nikola help                 show help
  nikola ignore               ignore task (skip) on subsequent runs
  nikola import_wordpress     import a WordPress dump
  nikola info                 show info about a task
  nikola init                 create a Nikola site in the specified folder
  nikola install_theme        install theme into current site
  nikola list                 list tasks from dodo file
  nikola new_page             create a new page in the site
  nikola new_post             create a new blog post or site page
  nikola orphans              list all orphans
  nikola plugin               manage plugins
  nikola reset-dep            recompute and save the state of file dependencies without executing actions
  nikola rst2html             compile reStructuredText to HTML files
  nikola serve                start the test webserver
  nikola status               display site status
  nikola strace               use strace to list file_deps and targets
  nikola tabcompletion        generate script for tab-completion
  nikola theme                manage themes
  nikola version              print the Nikola version number

  nikola help                 show help / reference
  nikola help <command>       show command usage
  nikola help <task-name>     show task usage

To test if Nikola works as intended, you can create a demo site by few commands and display it in your browser.

$ nikola init --demo              # Create and init a demo site
$ cd demo
$ nikola build                    # Build - generate the output
$ nikola serve -a 127.0.0.1 -b    # Display the site in your default browser

Comments