Skip to main content
Version: 2.0.0-beta.7 🚧

Installation

Docusaurus is essentially a set of npm packages.

tip

Use the Fast Track to understand Docusaurus in 5 minutes ⏱!

Use docusaurus.new to test Docusaurus immediately in your browser!

Requirements#

  • Node.js version >= 12.13.0 or above (which can be checked by running node -v). You can use nvm for managing multiple Node versions on a single machine installed
  • Yarn version >= 1.5 (which can be checked by running yarn --version). Yarn is a performant package manager for JavaScript and replaces the npm client. It is not strictly necessary but highly encouraged.

Scaffold project website#

The easiest way to install Docusaurus is to use the command line tool that helps you scaffold a skeleton Docusaurus website. You can run this command anywhere in a new empty repository or within an existing repository, it will create a new directory containing the scaffolded files.

npx @docusaurus/init@latest init [name] [template]

Example:

npx @docusaurus/init@latest init my-website classic

If you do not specify name or template, it will prompt you for them. We recommend the classic template so that you can get started quickly and it contains features found in Docusaurus 1. The classic template contains @docusaurus/preset-classic which includes standard documentation, a blog, custom pages, and a CSS framework (with dark mode support). You can get up and running extremely quickly with the classic template and customize things later on when you have gained more familiarity with Docusaurus.

[FB-Only]: If you are setting up a new Docusaurus website for a Facebook open source project, use the facebook template instead, which comes with some useful Facebook-specific defaults:

npx @docusaurus/init@latest init my-website facebook

[Experimental]: If you want setting up a new website using bootstrap, use the bootstrap template, like the following:

npx @docusaurus/init@latest init my-website bootstrap

If you want to skip installing dependencies, use the --skip-install option, like the following:

npx @docusaurus/init@latest init my-website classic --skip-install

You can also use the template's TypeScript variant by passing the --typescript flag.

npx @docusaurus/init@latest init my-website classic --typescript

Project structure#

Assuming you chose the classic template and named your site my-website, you will see the following files generated under a new directory my-website/:

my-website├── blog│   ├── 2019-05-28-hola.md│   ├── 2019-05-29-hello-world.md│   └── 2020-05-30-welcome.md├── docs│   ├── doc1.md│   ├── doc2.md│   ├── doc3.md│   └── mdx.md├── src│   ├── css│   │   └── custom.css│   └── pages│       ├── styles.module.css│       └── index.js├── static│   └── img├── docusaurus.config.js├── package.json├── README.md├── sidebars.js└── yarn.lock

Project structure rundown#

  • /blog/ - Contains the blog Markdown files. You can delete the directory if you do not want/need a blog. More details can be found in the blog guide
  • /docs/ - Contains the Markdown files for the docs. Customize the order of the docs sidebar in sidebars.js. More details can be found in the docs guide
  • /src/ - Non-documentation files like pages or custom React components. You don't have to strictly put your non-documentation files in here but putting them under a centralized directory makes it easier to specify in case you need to do some sort of linting/processing
    • /src/pages - Any files within this directory will be converted into a website page. More details can be found in the pages guide
  • /static/ - Static directory. Any contents inside here will be copied into the root of the final build directory
  • /docusaurus.config.js - A config file containing the site configuration. This is the equivalent of siteConfig.js in Docusaurus v1
  • /package.json - A Docusaurus website is a React app. You can install and use any npm packages you like in them
  • /sidebar.js - Used by the documentation to specify the order of documents in the sidebar

Running the development server#

To preview your changes as you edit the files, you can run a local development server that will serve your website and reflect the latest changes.

cd my-websitenpm run start

By default, a browser window will open at http://localhost:3000.

Congratulations! You have just created your first Docusaurus site! Browse around the site to see what's available.

Build#

Docusaurus is a modern static website generator so we need to build the website into a directory of static contents and put it on a web server so that it can be viewed. To build the website:

npm run build

and contents will be generated within the /build directory, which can be copied to any static file hosting service like GitHub pages, Vercel or Netlify. Check out the docs on deployment for more details.

Updating your Docusaurus version#

There are many ways to update your Docusaurus version. One guaranteed way is to manually change the version number in package.json to the desired version. Note that all @docusaurus/-namespaced packages should be using the same version.

important

Please update to the latest Docusaurus 2 version shown at the top of the page, not what is shown below.

package.json
"dependencies": {  "@docusaurus/core": "^2.0.0-beta.0",  "@docusaurus/preset-classic": "^2.0.0-beta.0",  // ...}

Then, in the directory containing package.json, run your package manager's install command:

npm install

To check that the update occurred successfully, run:

npx docusaurus --version

You should see the correct version as output.

Alternatively, if you are using Yarn, you can do:

yarn upgrade @docusaurus/core@latest @docusaurus/preset-classic@latest
tip

Use new unreleased features of Docusaurus with the @canary npm dist tag

Problems?#

Ask for help on Stack Overflow, on our GitHub repository or Twitter.