Getting Started

::: warning COMPATIBILITY NOTE
VuePress requires Node.js >= 8.
:::

Global Installation

If you just want to play around with VuePress, you can install it globally:

  1. # install globally
  2. yarn global add vuepress # OR npm install -g vuepress
  4. # create a markdown file
  5. echo '# Hello VuePress' > README.md
  7. # start writing
  8. vuepress dev
  10. # build
  11. vuepress build

Inside an Existing Project

If you have an existing project and would like to keep documentation inside the project, you should install VuePress as a local dependency. This setup also allows you to use CI or services like Netlify for automatic deployment on push.

  1. # install as a local dependency
  2. yarn add -D vuepress # OR npm install -D vuepress
  4. # create a docs directory
  5. mkdir docs
  6. # create a markdown file
  7. echo '# Hello VuePress' > docs/README.md

::: warning
It is currently recommended to use Yarn instead of npm when installing VuePress into an existing project that has webpack 3.x as a dependency. Npm fails to generate the correct dependency tree in this case.
:::

Then, add some scripts to package.json:

  1. {
  2.   "scripts": {
  3.     "docs:dev": "vuepress dev docs",
  4.     "docs:build": "vuepress build docs"
  5.   }
  6. }

You can now start writing with:

  1. yarn docs:dev # OR npm run docs:dev

To generate static assets, run:

  1. yarn docs:build # Or npm run docs:build

By default the built files will be in .vuepress/dist, which can be configured via the dest field in .vuepress/config.js. The built files can be deployed to any static file server. See Deployment Guide for guides on deploying to popular services.