.. title: From Zero to Nikola in One Minute Without Installing Anything
.. slug: from-zero-to-nikola-in-one-minute-without-installing-anything
.. date: 2016-08-30 12:09:48 UTC
.. tags:
.. category: nikola, planet, python
.. link:
.. description:
.. type: text

Maybe slightly more than one minute, but it's close to that. Thanks to `netlify <http://netlify.com>`__ and `GitHub <http://github.com>`__ (or `GitLab <http://gitlab.com>`__ or
`Bitbucket <http://bitbucket.org>`__) you can create, edit and publish a Nikola-based blog
without installing anything on your own computer.

This gives you about 75% of the convenience of a hosted blogging solution while keeping
all the advantages of a static site, like data ownership, versioning and avoiding vendor
lockin.

How to do it: you start by forking `this repo <https://github.com/getnikola/blog-template>`__
and follow the steps in this video:

.. raw:: html

   <div width="100%" style="text-align: center;">
   <iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7Yg6HbwdRro" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
   </div>

Keep in mind that this is not in any way a crippled version of Nikola, it has all the same features
as you would get installing it on your own device, you can add themes, plugins, image galleries,
etc by just adding things in your GitHub repository.

You should be able to do this with your own site, as long as it's stored in a GitHub repository
and you add a `requirements.txt like this one <https://github.com/getnikola/blog-template/blob/master/requirements.txt>`__ to your root directory.

So, a big round of applause for `netlify <http://netlify.com>`__ for an awesome service!