Nikola — The Best Blog Engine Ever!

I recently found out about Nikola (through Planet Python). It is awesome, even better than Hyde. Why? Right after the break.

Why?

  1. A lively community and an awesome lead developer, Roberto Alsina.

  2. Actively developed (last commit to Hyde was 11 months ago).

  3. Easily extensible.

  4. Ships with the Bootstrap style, to which I planned to migrate (and I did)

  5. reStructuredText, Markdown, Textile, … input.

How?

After you have Nikola installed:

Create a site:

nikola init mysite

Create a post:

nikola new_post

Edit the post:

The filename should be in the output of the previous command.

Build the site:

nikola build

Start the test server:

nikola serve

See the site:

http://127.0.0.1:8000

That should get you going. If you want to know more, this manual will always be here for you.

The Nikola Handbook by Roberto Alsina

That’s how easy it is. Nikola has many more useful features.

And sure, I had to manually fix up all the posts because I decided to switch to RST, but that’s not a problem.

Plans for the future

I did transition the blog, but not everything is done yet. I need to create a Contact form and a Project page. Both should be done by Sunday.