Welcome to Quokka Project documentation


logo

This docs covers the development version of Quokka CMS and is always subjected to changes, if you want previous docs versions use github tags.

Access our website to see more details: http://quokkaproject.org/

Quokka is an open source project and it is available at https://github.com/quokkaproject/quokka.

What is Quokka CMS, the happiest CMS in the world?


Quokka CMS is a Content Management System, a platform to publish blogs, websites, portals and also a nice solution for intranets, Document Management System (GED/ECM). It is even possible to create various kinds of applications based in content publishing as fundraising and e-commerce applications.

Quokka is Open Source developed in Python using Flask and MongoDB as its base.

Quokka is not limited to CMS area, it is possible to create Quokka extensions to provide any kind of web application based on Python and Flask.

Optionally, Quokka can generate a static website from the contents generated in its admin interface.

Features


  • Web based content management admin interface
  • Multiple content formats (markdown, rst, html, plaintext)
  • Compatibility with any of the Pelican Themes
  • Flat file NoSQL database TinyDB or optionally MongoDB for scale deployments
  • Host the Quokka on server or generate a static website
  • Extensible via modules/plugins
  • Powered by Python, Flask, Flask-Admin, TinyMongo and Pelican Themes

Installation


Demo

Use this if you want to see how Quokka works (you need to have docker installen in your machine)

docker run --rm -it -p 5000:5000 quokka/quokka

Go to http://localhost:5000/admin and login using admin/admin.

Installing Quokka from Pypi

NOTE: QuokkaCMS requires Python 3.6+

python3 -m venv venv
. venv/bin/activate
pip3 install quokka

Installing and running for development mode

NOTE: Quokka CMS requires Python 3.6+

git clone https://github.com/quokkaproject/quokka
cd quokka
python3 -m venv venv
. venv/bin/activate
make install
make devserver

Using Quokka CMS

Start a project

quokka init NewWebsite --theme=flex --modules=gitpages,heroku
🐹 Quokka project created 🐹
📝 Name: NewWebsite
📁 Location: /tmp/newwebsite
📚 Template: default
🎨 Themes: flex theme installed
🚚 Modules: [gitpages, heroku] installed
🔧 Config: Config file written in /tmp/newwebsite/quokka.yml
➡ Go to /tmp/newwebsite
⚙ run `quokka runserver` to start!
📄 Check the documentation on http://quokkaproject.org
🐹 Happy Quokka! 🐹

YES! it outputs emojis 🐹

The above command will generate your project in NewWebsite folder as:

.
├── databases        # TinyDB database files (gitignored)
├── modules          # Custom modules to load on EXTRA_EXTENSIONS
├── static_build     # output static site
├── themes           # Front-end Themes (Pelican and Quokka Themes supported)
├── uploads          # Media uploaded via admin
├── .gitignore       # gitignore to exclude sensitive files
├── quokka.yml       # Project settings
├── .secrets.yml     # To store keys, tokens and passwords (gitignored)
└── wsgi.py          # To deploy `gunicorn wsgi:app`

You can optionally pass arguments:

Choose existing theme (the default is Malt)

quokka init NewWebsite --theme http://github.com/<user>/theme

Install modules

quokka init NewWebsite --theme http://github.com/<user>/theme --modules="commerce,foo"

the above looks for quokka_commerce and quokka_foo in PyPI and installs it

Set important configurations

quokka init NewWebsite --theme http://github.com/user/theme --config="auth_enabled=false"

That is optional, you can to edit quokka.yml to tune your settings.

Create an admin user

quokka adduser

Run your website

quokka runserver --port 5000

Access admin interface

http://localhost:5000/admin

Access your site

http://localhost:5000

Deploy

You can deploy your Quokka Website in a WSGI server

Check the wsgi.py and refer to it when deploying in wsgi servers.

cd myproject
gunicorn wsgi:app -w 4 -b "0.0.0.0:8000"

An example of supervisord config

[program:quokka]
command=/myproject/venv/bin/gunicorn wsgi:app -w 4 -b "0.0.0.0:8000"
directory=/myproject

For more information read Gunicorn documentation

Publish Static HTML website

NOTE: To generate a static website all user management, keys and passwords will be removed from settings.

You can generate a static HTML website to host anywhere

Once you have your website running locally you can easily generate a static HTML website from it.

$ quokka publish --static [--output path]
Generating static HTML website on ./static_build folder

Once you have a ./static_build folder populated with static website you can deploy it using SCP, FTP or git, it is a full static website.

Deploying to github pages from command line

NOTE: You need either ssh key access to github or it will ask login/password

quokka publish --static --git=<user>/<mysite> --branch=gh_pages

The above is also available in admin under 'publish' menu.

Deploying via SCP

$ quokka publish --static --scp --dest='me@hostname:/var/www/mysite' [--sshkey ~/.ssh/key] [--password xyz]
password: ...

Deploying to Heroku

This requires heroku client installed, if Procfile is not found it will be generated

quokka publish --static --heroku --options

Deploying via FTP

quokka publish --static --ftp --host='ftp://server.com' --dest='/var/www/mysite'

Load database from remote deployment (only for TinyDB)

When you publish a static website along with the static files the database also goes to the server under the databases/ folder only as a backup and snapshot.

You can load that remote database locally e.g: to add new posts and then re-publish

$ quokka restoredb --remote --git=rochacbruno/mysite
Creating a backup of local database...
Downloading remote database
Restoring database..
Done...

Now you can run quokka runserver open your localhost:5000/admin write new content and then Publish website again using command line or admin interface.

NOTE: If you want to restore a local database use --local and --path path/to/db

Using MongoDB

You can choose to use MongoDB instead of TinyDB, That is useful specially if you deploy or local instance has more than one admin user concurrently and also useful if you want to install plugins which support MongoDB only (because it relies on aggregations and gridfs)

You only need a running instance of Mongo server and change quokka.yml:DB on your project from:

quokka:
  DB:
    system: tinydb
    folder: databases

to:

quokka:
  DB:
    system: mongodb
    name: my_database
    host: 127.0.0.1
    port: 2600

Then when running quokka again it will try to connect to that Mongo Server.

With that you can deploy your site on wsgi server or can also generate static website.

Running mongo in a Docker container

cd <your quokka project folder>
docker run -d -v $PWD/databases:/data/db -p 27017:27017 mongo
# wait some seconds until mongo is started
quokka runserver

Contributing to Quokka CMS Development

Do you want to be part of this open-source project?

Take a look at Contributing Guidelines

Setup a contributor environment

Ensure you have Python3.6+ fork this repo and:

git clone https://github.com/$YOURNAME/quokka
cd quokka

# create a Python3.6 virtual env
make create_env

# activate the venv
. venv/bin/activate

# install Quokka in --editable mode (using pbr)
make install

# Create a new admin user
make adduser

# run quokka
make devserver

Access http://localhost:5000/admin and http://localhost

Roadmap

This list is available on Github.

This is the list of tasks to be completed until 1.0.0 can be released.

Support 100% coming only for malt and bootstrap3 themes

Screenshots

The main Admin page

home cms

Pelican themes compatible

An article showing in Malt theme

start contributing to quokka project my site

The same article using Bootstrap 3 theme

start contributing to quokka project my site2

See more screenshots on Github.

Start contributing right now!