Writer Quickstart

Create your first site and start writing content

3 min read 602 words

Create your first Bengal site and publish content in 5 minutes. No theming or code required.

Prerequisites

Before You Start

1/3 complete

Create Your Site

bengal new site myblog --template blog
cd myblog

The --template blog flag scaffolds a complete blog structure with sample posts. Other templates: default, docs, portfolio, product, resume.

Or use a custom skeleton YAML

Define your site structure in one YAML file:

name: My Blog
structure:
  - path: index.md
    type: blog
    props:
      title: My Blog
    content: |
      # Welcome to My Blog

  - path: posts/hello-world.md
    type: blog
    props:
      title: Hello World
      date: "2026-01-15"
    content: |
      # Hello World
      My first post!

Apply it:

bengal project skeleton apply my-blog.yaml

See Skeleton YAML Quickstart for more examples.

Start the Dev Server

bengal serve

Your browser opens automatically at http://localhost:5173/. The server rebuilds on save—CSS changes apply instantly without page refresh.

Create Your First Post

bengal new page my-first-post --section blog

This creates content/blog/my-first-post.md. Edit it:

---
title: My First Post
date: 2026-01-15
tags: [welcome]
description: Getting started with Bengal
---

# My First Post

Welcome to my blog! Bengal makes publishing simple.

## What's Next

- Add more posts with `bengal new page`
- Customize your theme
- Deploy to the web

Save. The page appears instantly in your browser.

Customize Your Site

Editconfig/_default/site.yaml:

site:
  title: "My Awesome Blog"
  description: "Thoughts on code, design, and life"
  language: "en"
Other config files

Bengal splits configuration across focused files inconfig/_default/:

File Purpose
build.yaml Parallel builds, output directory
theme.yaml Theme selection and options
features.yaml Search, RSS, sitemap toggles
content.yaml Markdown processing options

See Configuration Reference for details.

Build and Deploy

bengal build

Output goes to public/. Deploy to any static host:

Platform Build Command Output
Netlify bengal build public
Vercel bengal build public
GitHub Pages bengal build public

Bengal auto-detects Netlify, Vercel, and GitHub Pages to setbaseurlautomatically. See Deployment Guide for CI/CD workflows.

Frontmatter Essentials

Every page starts with YAML frontmatter:

---
title: Page Title           # Required
date: 2026-01-15            # Publication date (ISO format)
description: SEO text       # Search/social preview
tags: [tag1, tag2]          # Taxonomy
draft: true                 # Exclude from production
---
All frontmatter fields
Field Description
title Page title (required)
date Publication date (ISO format)
description SEO/social preview text
tags Taxonomy tags (e.g.,[python, web])
weight Sort order in section (lower = first)
draft trueexcludes from production builds
slug Custom URL (overrides filename)
type Page type for template selection
variant Visual presentation variant
lang Language code (en, es, etc.)
nav_title Short title for navigation
aliases Redirect URLs to this page

Custom fields are accessible in templates viapage.props.fieldname, page.params.fieldname, or page.metadata.fieldname(all equivalent).

Next Steps