YiiPress Documentation

Quickstart

1. Create a new project

composer create-project yiipress/engine myblog
cd myblog

2. Configure your site

Edit content/config.yaml:

title: My Blog
description: A personal blog
base_url: https://example.com
language: en

date_format: "F j, Y"
entries_per_page: 10

permalink: /:collection/:slug/

taxonomies:
  - tags
  - categories

3. Create a collection

Create a blog collection directory and its config:

mkdir -p content/blog

Create content/blog/_collection.yaml:

title: Blog
sort_by: date
sort_direction: desc
feed: true
listing: true

4. Write your first post

Create content/blog/2024-01-15-hello-world.md:

---
title: "Hello World"
tags:
  - general
---

Welcome to my blog! This is my first post.

## What is YiiPress?

YiiPress is a static blog engine built on Yii3. It is:

- Exceptionally fast
- File-based (no database)
- Extensible with plugins

5. Create a standalone page

Create content/about.md:

---
title: "About"
---

This is my personal blog where I write about programming.

6. Add navigation

Create content/navigation.yaml:

main:
  - title: Home
    url: /
  - title: Blog
    url: /blog/
  - title: About
    url: /about/

7. Build the site

make yii build

This generates static HTML in the output/ directory:

output/
├── blog/
│   ├── hello-world/
│   │   └── index.html
│   └── index.html
├── about/
│   └── index.html
├── tags/
│   ├── general/
│   │   └── index.html
│   └── index.html
├── sitemap.xml
└── blog/
    ├── feed.xml
    └── rss.xml

8. Preview locally

Start the dev server:

make up

Open http://localhost:8087 in your browser (port is configured in docker/.env).

Build options

Include drafts and future-dated posts during development:

make yii build -- --drafts --future

Use multiple workers for faster builds:

make yii build -- --workers=4

Disable cache for a clean build:

make yii build -- --no-cache

Next steps

  • Add authors in content/authors/ — see Content
  • Customize permalinks — see Content
  • Configure markdown extensions — see Configuration
  • Link between posts using relative .md paths — see Content
  • Learn about all build options — see Commands