VitePress

VitePress ↗ is a static site generator ↗ (SSG) designed for building fast, content-centric websites. VitePress takes your source content written in Markdown ↗, applies a theme to it, and generates static HTML pages that can be easily deployed anywhere.

In this guide, you will create a new VitePress project and deploy it using Cloudflare Pages.

Set up a new project

VitePress ships with a command line setup wizard that will help you scaffold a basic project.

Run the following command in your terminal to create a new VitePress project:

npm

npx vitepress@latest init

pnpm

pnpm dlx vitepress@latest init

yarn

yarn dlx vitepress@latest init

bun

bunx vitepress@latest init

Amongst other questions, the setup wizard will ask you in which directory to save your new project, make sure to be in the project’s directory and then install the vitepress dependency with the following command:

npm

npm add -D vitepress

pnpm

pnpm add -D vitepress

yarn

yarn add -D vitepress

bun

bun add -D vitepress

Note

If you encounter errors, make sure your local machine meets the Prerequisites for VitePress ↗.

Finally create a .gitignore file with the following content:

node_modules
.vitepress/cache
.vitepress/dist

This step makes sure that unnecessary files are not going to be included in the project’s git repository (which we will set up next).

Before you continue

All of the framework guides assume you already have a fundamental understanding of Git ↗. If you are new to Git, refer to this summarized Git handbook ↗ on how to set up Git on your local machine.

If you clone with SSH, you must generate SSH keys ↗ on each computer you use to push or pull from GitHub.

Refer to the GitHub documentation ↗ and Git documentation ↗ for more information.

Create a GitHub repository

Create a new GitHub repository by visiting repo.new ↗. After creating a new repository, go to your newly created project directory to prepare and push your local application to GitHub by running the following commands in your terminal:

git init
git remote add origin https://github.com/<your-gh-username>/<repository-name>
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git branch -M main
git push -u origin main

Deploy with Cloudflare Pages

To deploy your site to Pages:

1. Log in to the Cloudflare dashboard ↗ and select your account.
2. In Account Home, select Workers & Pages > Create application > Pages > Connect to Git.
3. Select the new GitHub repository that you created and, in the Set up builds and deployments section, the following information will be provided:

Configuration option	Value
Production branch	main
Build command	npx vitepress build
Build directory	.vitepress/dist

After configuring your site, you can begin your first deploy. Cloudflare Pages will install vitepress, your project dependencies, and build your site, before deploying it.

Note

For the complete guide to deploying your first site to Cloudflare Pages, refer to the Get started guide.

After deploying your site, you will receive a unique subdomain for your project on *.pages.dev. Every time you commit and push new code to your VitePress project, Cloudflare Pages will automatically rebuild your project and deploy it. You will also get access to preview deployments on new pull requests, so you can preview how changes to your site look before deploying them to production.

Learn more

By completing this guide, you have successfully deployed your VitePress site to Cloudflare Pages. To get started with other frameworks, refer to the list of Framework guides.