--- Title: Welcome Description: Pico is a stupidly simple, blazing fast, flat file CMS. --- ## Welcome to Pico Congratulations, you have successfully installed [Pico](http://picocms.org/). %meta.description% ## Creating Content Pico is a flat file CMS, this means there is no administration backend or database to deal with. You simply create `.md` files in the `content-sample` folder and that becomes a page. For example, this file is called `index.md` and is shown as the main landing page. If you create a folder within the content folder (e.g. `content-sample/sub`) and put an `index.md` inside it, you can access that folder at the URL `http://yoursite.com/?sub`. If you want another page within the sub folder, simply create a text file with the corresponding name and you will be able to access it (e.g. `content-sample/sub/page.md` is accessible from the URL `http://yoursite.com/?sub/page`). Below we've shown some examples of locations and their corresponing URLs:
Physical Location URL
content-sample/index.md /
content-sample/sub.md ?sub (not accessible, see below)
content-sample/sub/index.md ?sub (same as above)
content-sample/sub/page.md ?sub/page
content-sample/a/very/long/url.md ?a/very/long/url (doesn't exist)
If a file cannot be found, the file `content-sample/404.md` will be shown. You can add `404.md` files to any directory, so if you want to use a special error page for your blog, simply create `content-sample/blog/404.md`. ### Text File Markup Text files are marked up using [Markdown][]. They can also contain regular HTML. At the top of text files you can place a block comment and specify certain attributes of the page. For example: --- Title: Welcome Description: This description will go in the meta description tag Author: Joe Bloggs Date: 2013/01/01 Robots: noindex,nofollow Template: index --- These values will be contained in the `{{ meta }}` variable in themes (see below). There are also certain variables that you can use in your text files: * %site_title% - The title of your Pico site * %base_url% - The URL to your Pico site; internal links can be specified using %base_url%?sub/page * %theme_url% - The URL to the currently used theme * %meta.*% - Access any meta variable of the current page, e.g. %meta.author% is replaced with `Joe Bloggs` ### Blogging Pico is not blogging software - but makes it very easy for you to use it as a blog. You can find many plugins out there implementing typical blogging features like authentication, tagging, pagination and social plugins. See the below Plugins section for details. If you want to use Pico as a blogging software, you probably want to do something like the following: 1. Put all your blog articles in a separate `blog` folder in your `content` directory. All these articles should have both a `Date` and `Template` meta header, the latter with e.g. `blog-post` as value (see Step 2). 2. Create a new Twig template called `blog-post.twig` (this must match the `Template` meta header from Step 1) in your theme directory. This template probably isn't very different from your default `index.twig`, it specifies how your article pages will look like. 3. Create a `blog.md` in your `content` folder and set its `Template` meta header to e.g. `blog`. Also create a `blog.twig` in your theme directory. This template will show a list of your articles, so you probably want to do something like this: ``` {% for page in pages %} {% if page.id starts with "blog/" %}

{{ page.title }}

{{ page.date_formatted }}

{{ page.description }}

{% endif %} {% endfor %} ``` 4. Let Pico sort pages by date by setting `$config['pages_order_by'] = 'date';` in your `config/config.php`. To use a descending order (newest articles first), also add `$config['pages_order'] = 'desc';`. The former won't affect pages without a `Date` meta header, but the latter does. To use ascending order for your page navigation again, add Twigs `reverse` filter to the navigation loop (`{% for page in pages|reverse %}...{% endfor %}`) in your themes `index.twig`. 5. Make sure to exclude the blog articles from your page navigation. You can achieve this by adding `{% if not page starts with "blog/" %}...{% endif %}` to the navigation loop. ## Customization Pico is highly customizable in two different ways: On the one hand you can change Picos apperance by using themes, on the other hand you can add new functionality by using plugins. Doing the former includes changing Picos HTML, CSS and JavaScript, the latter mostly consists of PHP programming. This is all Greek to you? Don't worry, you don't have to spend time on these techie talk - it's very easy to use one of the great themes or plugins others developed and released to the public. Please refer to the next sections for details. ### Themes You can create themes for your Pico installation in the `themes` folder. Check out the default theme for an example. Pico uses [Twig][] for template rendering. You can select your theme by setting the `$config['theme']` option in `config/config.php` to the name of your theme folder. All themes must include an `index.twig` (or `index.html`) file to define the HTML structure of the theme. Below are the Twig variables that are available to use in your theme. Please note that paths (e.g. `{{ base_dir }}`) and URLs (e.g. `{{ base_url }}`) don't have a trailing slash. * `{{ config }}` - Conatins the values you set in `config/config.php` (e.g. `{{ config.theme }}` becomes `default`) * `{{ base_dir }}` - The path to your Pico root directory * `{{ base_url }}` - The URL to your Pico site; use Twigs `link` filter to specify internal links (e.g. `{{ "sub/page"|link }}`), this guarantees that your link works whether URL rewriting is enabled or not * `{{ theme_dir }}` - The path to the currently active theme * `{{ theme_url }}` - The URL to the currently active theme * `{{ rewrite_url }}` - A boolean flag indicating enabled/disabled URL rewriting * `{{ site_title }}` - Shortcut to the site title (see `config/config.php`) * `{{ meta }}` - Contains the meta values from the current page * `{{ meta.title }}` * `{{ meta.description }}` * `{{ meta.author }}` * `{{ meta.date }}` * `{{ meta.date_formatted }}` * `{{ meta.time }}` * `{{ meta.robots }}` * ... * `{{ content }}` - The content of the current page (after it has been processed through Markdown) * `{{ pages }}` - A collection of all the content pages in your site * `{{ page.id }}` - The relative path to the content file * `{{ page.url }}` - The URL to the page * `{{ page.title }}` - The title of the page (YAML header) * `{{ page.description }}` - The description of the page (YAML header) * `{{ page.author }}` - The author of the page (YAML header) * `{{ page.time }}` - The timestamp derived from the `Date` header * `{{ page.date }}` - The date of the page (YAML header) * `{{ page.date_formatted }}` - The formatted date of the page * `{{ page.raw_content }}` - The raw, not yet parsed contents of the page * `{{ page.meta }}`- The meta values of the page * `{{ prev_page }}` - The data of the previous page (relative to `current_page`) * `{{ current_page }}` - The data of the current page * `{{ next_page }}` - The data of the next page (relative to `current_page`) * `{{ is_front_page }}` - A boolean flag for the front page Pages can be used like the following: You can use different templates for different content files by specifing the `Template` meta header. Simply add e.g. `Template: blog-post` to a content file and Pico will use the `blog-post.twig` file in your theme folder to render the page. You don't have to create your own theme if Picos default theme isn't sufficient for you, you can use one of the great themes third-party developers and designers created in the past. As with plugins, you can find themes in [our Wiki](https://github.com/picocms/Pico/wiki/Pico-Themes). ### Plugins #### Plugins for users Officially tested plugins can be found at http://pico.dev7studios.com/plugins, but there are many awesome third-party plugins out there! A good start point for discovery is [our Wiki](https://github.com/picocms/Pico/wiki/Pico-Plugins). Pico makes it very easy for you to add new features to your website. Simply upload the files of the plugin to the `plugins/` directory and you're done. Depending on the plugin you've installed, you may have to go through some more steps (e.g. specifing config variables), the plugin docs or `README` file will explain what to do. Plugins which were written to work with Pico 1.0 can be enabled and disabled through your `config/config.php`. If you want to e.g. disable the `PicoExcerpt` plugin, add the following line to your `config/config.php`: `$config['PicoExcerpt.enabled'] = false;`. To force the plugin to be enabled replace `false` with `true`. #### Plugins for developers You're a plugin developer? We love you guys! You can find tons of information about how to develop plugins at http://picocms.org/plugin-dev.html. If you'd developed a plugin for Pico 0.9 and older, you probably want to upgrade it to the brand new plugin system introduced with Pico 1.0. Please refer to the [upgrade section of the docs][PluginUpgrade]. ## Config You can override the default Pico settings (and add your own custom settings) by editing `config/config.php` in the Pico directory. For a brief overview of the available settings and their defaults see `config/config.php.template`. To override a setting, copy `config/config.php.template` to `config/config.php`, uncomment the setting and set your custom value. ### URL Rewriting Picos default URLs (e.g. %base_url%/?sub/page) already are very user friendly. Pico anyway offers you an URL rewrite feature to make URLs even more user friendly (e.g. %base_url%/sub/page). If you're using the Apache web server, URL rewriting probably already is enabled - try it yourself, click on the [second URL](%base_url%/sub/page). If you get an error message from your web server, please make sure to enable the `mod_rewrite` module. Assumed the second URL works, but Pico still shows no rewritten URLs, force URL rewriting by setting `$config['rewrite_url'] = true;` in your `config/config.php`. If you're using Nginx, you can use the following configuration to enable URL rewriting. Don't forget to adjust the path (`/pico/`; line `1` and `4`) to match your installation directory. You can then enable URL rewriting by setting `$config['rewrite_url'] = true;` in your `config/config.php`. location /pico/ { index index.php; try_files $uri $uri/ /pico/?$uri&$args; } ## Upgrading to Pico 1.0 We worked hard to make the upgrade process to Pico 1.0 as easy as possible - and we think we made the grade. Usually you don't have to consider anything special, nevertheless you should create a backup of your Pico installation before upgrading. The first step is to delete all of Picos files except for your `content` directory, `config.php` (or `config/config.php`) and, if applicable, the directory of your custom theme. Provided that you're using plugins, also keep the `plugins` directory. You can then upload Pico 1.0 to your installation directory. Please refer to the websites of the plugins you're using to get updates for them. The new `PicoDeprecated` plugin ensures backward compatibility to Pico 0.9 and older. The plugin is disabled by default, but gets automatically enabled as soon as a old plugin is loaded. We will maintain backward compatibility for a long time, however, we recommend you to take the following steps to confine the neccessity of `PicoDeprecated` to old plugins. If you don't use plugins or upgraded all plugins to be compatible to Pico 1.0, you must take these steps. If you're a plugin developer, please refer to the new development docs, particularly the [plugin upgrade section][PluginUpgrade]. * Move your `config.php` to the new `config/` directory. * URL Rewriting became optional in Pico 1.0. If you don't use the `.htaccess` file provided by Pico, you must update your rewriting rules to let the webserver rewrite internal links (e.g. `index.php?sub/page`) correctly. You musn't update your markdown files or custom Twig templates if you keep URL rewriting enabled. Otherwise you have to rectify all internal links in markdown files (e.g. %base_url%?sub/page) and your custom Twig templates (e.g. (e.g. `{{ "sub/page"|link }}`)). * Pico 1.0 doesn't parse the contents of all pages anymore. This can be put down to the massive performance impact, but leads to the removal of the generation of auto-generated excerpts. TODO: describe how to force enable/disable `PicoExcerpt` and `PicoParsePagesContent` * TODO: Removing various empty `index.html` files; check accessibility! ## Documentation For more help have a look at the Pico documentation at [http://picocms.org/docs](http://picocms.org/docs) [Twig]: http://twig.sensiolabs.org/documentation [Markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax [PluginUpgrade]: http://picocms.org/plugin-dev.html#upgrade