# Getting Started

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

# Global Installation

If you only want to play around with MdPress, you can install it globally:

# install globally
yarn global add mdpress # OR npm install -g mdpress

# create the project folder
mkdir mdpress-starter && cd mdpress-starter

# create a markdown file
echo '# Hello MdPress' > README.md

# start writing
mdpress dev

# build
mdpress build

# Inside an Existing Project

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

# install as a local dependency
yarn add -D mdpress # OR npm install -D mdpress

# create a docs directory
mkdir docs
# create a markdown file
echo '# Hello MdPress' > docs/README.md

::: warning We currently recommend using Yarn instead of npm when installing MdPress into an existing project that has webpack 3.x as a dependency, because npm fails to generate the correct dependency tree in this case. :::

Then, add some scripts to package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "docs:dev": "mdpress dev docs",
    "docs:build": "mdpress build docs"
  }
}

You can now start writing with:

yarn docs:dev # OR npm run docs:dev

To generate static assets, run:

yarn docs:build # OR npm run docs:build

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