Getting Started

Note

VuePress v2 is currently in beta stage. It's ready to be used for building your site, but the config and API are not stable enough, which is likely to have breaking changes between minor releases. So make sure to read the changelog carefully each time you upgrade a beta version.

Prerequisites

• Node.js v14.18.0+
• Yarn v1 classic (Optional)

Tips

• With pnpm, you may need to install vue and @vuepress/client as peer-dependencies, i.e. pnpm add -D vue @vuepress/client@next.
• With yarn 2, you need to set nodeLinker: 'node-modules' in your .yarnrc.yml file.

Manual Installation

This section will help you build a basic VuePress documentation site from ground up. If you already have an existing project and would like to keep documentation inside the project, start from Step 3.

• Step 1: Create and change into a new directory

mkdir vuepress-starter
cd vuepress-starter

• Step 2: Initialize your project

git init
pnpm init

git init
yarn init

git init
npm init

• Step 3: Install VuePress locally

pnpm add -D vuepress@next @vuepress/client@next vue

yarn add -D vuepress@next

npm install -D vuepress@next

• Step 4: Add some scripts to package.json

{
  "scripts": {
    "docs:dev": "vuepress dev docs",
    "docs:build": "vuepress build docs"
  }
}

• Step 5: Add the default temp and cache directory to .gitignore file

echo 'node_modules' >> .gitignore
echo '.temp' >> .gitignore
echo '.cache' >> .gitignore

• Step 6: Create your first document

mkdir docs
echo '# Hello VuePress' > docs/README.md

• Step 7: Serve the documentation site in the local server

pnpm docs:dev

yarn docs:dev

npm run docs:dev

VuePress will start a hot-reloading development server at http://localhost:8080. When you modify your markdown files, the content in the browser will be auto updated.

By now, you should have a basic but functional VuePress documentation site. Next, learn about the basics of configuration in VuePress.