Getting Started

PocoCMS lets you start a website in just a few seconds.

Before we go there, make sure you can:

• Open a command prompt for your operating system
• Use a text editor
• Understand how to create and navigate directories from the command prompt

Besides those things you won't need any other knowledge. These directions guide you through everything you need to know step by step. OK, time to build a website in exactly one second more than it takes to read these directions!

Create a site

• Come up with a name and location for your site. Let's cleverly call it mysite and assume it's in the current directory.

That directory will contain all the files you need to generate your site. In this documentation it's called your project or site. They're usually synonomous.

• Create the new site with poco -new:

You'll type poco -new followed by the directory name, like this:

poco -new mysite

Poco responds instantly that the site has been created:

Site published to /Users/tom/pococms/poco/mysite/WWW/index.html

• Change to the project directory you just created:

cd mysite

• We'll look at the files PocoCMS generated in a moment, but let's view the site.

• Run poco -serve:

poco -serve

• This launches a simple webserver that lets you see the site as others on the web will see it. To view it in a browser, start the browser and paste in the line with http://localhost:54321 as shown below:

Web server running at:

http://localhost:54321

To stop the web server, press Ctrl+C

You'll see what you've created:

View the files PocoCMS created

Let's take a look at what poco -new just generated. Get a directory listing. It will appear something like this:

WWW
.poco
index.md

We'll explain the WWW and .poco directories in a few moments.

• Take a look at the contents of the index.md file:

---
title: "Powered with ♥ by PocoCMS"
---
# Welcome to mysite

hello, world.

Learn more at [PocoCMS tutorials](https://pococms.com/docs/tutorials.html) 

Notice there's a directory called WWW. Examine its contents.

Directory: WWW

.
├── WWW
│   └── index.html
├── .poco
└── index.md

It generated the file index.html from the contents of index.md. Later when you add a theme the output will also include CSS files and other assets required when the browser renders your site.

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