Configuration

Guide to all available configuration settings.

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Introduction

Project settings are always configured by using a YAML configuration file in the project directory named mkdocs.yml.

As a miniumum this configuration file must contain the site_name setting. All other settings are optional.

Project information

site_name

This is a required setting, and should be a string that is used as the main title for the project documentation. For example:

site_name: Mashmallow Generator

When rendering the theme this setting will be passed as the site_name context variable.

site_url

Set the canonical URL of the site. This will add a link tag with the canonical URL to the generated HTML header.

default: null

repo_url

When set, provides a link to your GitHub or Bitbucket repository on each page.

repo_url: https://github.com/example/repository/

default: null

repo_name

When set, provides a link to your GitHub or Bitbucket repository on each page.

default: 'GitHub' or 'Bitbucket' if the repo_url matches those domains, otherwise null

site_description

Set the site description. This will add a meta tag to the generated HTML header. default: null

site_author

Set the name of the author. This will add a meta tag to the generated HTML header.

default: null

site_favicon

Set the favicon to use. Putting a favicon.ico into the docs/ directory, the config would look as follows:

site_favicon: favicon.ico

default: null

copyright

Set the copyright information to be included in the documentation by the theme.

default: null

google_analytics

Set the Google analytics tracking configuration.

google_analytics: ['UA-36723568-3', 'mkdocs.org']

default: null

Documentation layout

pages

This is setting is used to determine the set of pages that should be built for the documentation.

The setting should be a list. Each row in the list represents information about a single page as a list of strings. The first string represents the path of the documentation source file, and should be relative to the docs_dir setting. Remaining strings represent the title of the page in the site navigation.

Here's a simple example that would cause the build stage to create three pages:

pages:
- ['index.md', 'Introduction']
- ['user-guide.md', 'User Guide']
- ['about.md', 'About']

Assuming the docs_dir setting was left with the default value of docs, the source files for this site's build process would be docs/index.md, docs/user-guide.md and docs/about.md.

If you have a lot of project documentation you might choose to use headings to break up your site navigation by category. You can do so by including an extra string in the page configuration for any pages that require a navigation heading, like so:

pages:
- ['index.md', 'Introduction']
- ['user-guide/creating.md', 'User Guide', 'Creating a new Mashmallow project']
- ['user-guide/api.md', 'User Guide', 'Mashmallow API guide']
- ['user-guide/configuration.md', 'User Guide', 'Configuring Mashmallow']
- ['about/license.md', 'About', 'License']

Build directories

theme

Sets the theme of your documentation site, for a list of available themes visit styling your docs.

default: 'mkdocs'

theme_dir

Lets you set a directory to a custom theme. This can either be a relative directory, in which case it is resolved relative to the directory containing you configuration file, or it can be an absolute directory path.

See styling your docs for an explanation of custom themes.

default: null

docs_dir

Lets you set the directory containing the documentation source markdown files. This can either be a relative directory, in which case it is resolved relative to the directory containing you configuration file, or it can be an absolute directory path.

default: 'docs'

site_dir

Lets you set the directory where the output HTML and other files are created. This can either be a relative directory, in which case it is resolved relative to the directory containing you configuration file, or it can be an absolute directory path.

default: 'site'

Note: If you are using source code control you will normally want to ensure that your build output files are not commited into the repository, and only keep the source files under version control. For example, if using git you might add the following line to your .gitignore file:

site/

If you're using another source code control you'll want to check its documentation on how to ignore specific directories.

extra_css

Set a list of css files to be included by the theme.

default: By default extra_css will contain a list of all the CSS files found within the docs_dir, if none are found it will be [] (an empty list).

extra_javascript

Set a list of JavaScript files to be included by the theme.

default: By default extra_javascript will contain a list of all the JavaScript files found within the docs_dir, if none are found it will be [] (an empty list).

Preview controls

use_directory_urls

This setting controls the style used for linking to pages within the documentation.

The following table demonstrates how the URLs used on the site differ when setting use_directory_urls to true or false.

Source file	Generated HTML	use_directory_urls=true	use_directory_urls=false
index.md	index.html	/	/index.html
api-guide.md	api-guide/index.html	/api-guide/	/api-guide/index.html
about.md	about/index.html	/about/	/about/index.html

The default style of use_directory_urls=true creates more user friendly URLs, and is usually what you'll want to use.

The alternate style can occasionally be useful if you want your documentation to remain properly linked when opening pages directly from the file system, because it create links that point directly to the target file rather than the target directory.

default: true

dev_addr

Determines the address used when running mkdocs serve. Setting this allows you to use another port, or allows you to make the service accessible over your local network by using the 0.0.0.0 address.

As with all settings, you can set this from the command line, which can be usful, for example:

mkdocs serve --dev-addr=0.0.0.0:80  # Run on port 80, accessible over the local network.

default: '127.0.0.1:8000'

Formatting options

markdown_extensions

MkDocs uses the Python Markdown library to translate Markdown files into HTML. Python Markdown supports a variety of extensions that customize how pages are formatted. This setting lets you enable a list of extensions beyond the ones that MkDocs uses by default (meta, toc, tables, and fenced_code).

For example, to enable the SmartyPants typography extension, use:

markdown_extensions: [smartypants]

default: []