Getting Started

Sarde is a zero-config static site generator. Drop Markdown files into a content/ folder and get a fully-themed, production-ready website. This page covers installing Sarde, creating a site, and previewing it locally.

Install Sarde

brew install getsarde/sarde/sarde

curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/getsarde/sarde/main/install.sh | sh

go install github.com/getsarde/sarde/cmd/sarde@latest

Verify the installation:

sarde version

→ Prints the installed version number and build platform.

Create a site

sarde new site my-site
cd my-site

→ The terminal prints:

Created new site at /path/to/my-site
  Run 'sarde dev' to start the dev server.

The scaffolded project contains everything needed to start:

my-site/
  sarde.yaml            # Site configuration
  kazari.config.yaml    # Code block highlighting settings
  content/
    _index.md            # Homepage
    blog/
      _index.md
      hello-world.md     # Sample blog post
    docs/
      _index.md
      getting-started.md # Sample docs page
  public/
    images/
  .gitignore

The sarde.yaml file controls the site title, theme preset, homepage hero, and all other settings. See Configuration for the full reference.

Start the dev server

sarde dev

→ The terminal prints:

 sarde  v1.0.0 ready in 320 ms
┃ Local    http://localhost:4727
┃ Network  use --host 0.0.0.0 to expose

Open http://localhost:4727 in a browser to see the site. The dev server watches for file changes and reloads the browser automatically. CSS changes hot-swap without a full page reload.

Draft and expired content is included by default in dev mode. Use --no-drafts to exclude it.

Add content

Create a new docs page:

sarde new docs "My First Page"

→ The terminal prints:

Created content/docs/my-first-page.md

Open content/docs/my-first-page.md in an editor. The file starts with frontmatter pre-filled by Sarde:

---
title: My First Page
---

Add Markdown content below the frontmatter, save the file, and the browser updates automatically. The new page appears in the sidebar navigation.

Sarde auto-detects the collection type from the directory name. Content in docs/ gets the docs layout with sidebar navigation, while content in blog/ gets the blog layout with date-sorted posts.

Next steps

• Configuration to customize sarde.yaml
• Content & Collections to understand collections, sections, and page bundles
• Deploying to publish the site to the web