I am new to pelican, so in reality this is just the steps I used to setup my pelican blog. Feel free to experiment and do things differently.
Create your virtual environment.
Anytime you are using python, you should always utilize a virtual environment. In this tutorial we will use virtualenv. This will prevent us from junking up our global install of python.
For first timers I suggest visiting the hitchhiker's guide to python, as they have a very comprehensive tutorial on getting started with virtual environments.
Install Pelican
Verify that your virtual environment is active so that we can start to install packages. Here we will install pelican and it's helper package Markdown.
pip install pelican Markdown
Pelican Quick Start
Now it's time to setup the site. Run the quick-start command and enter in details such as the site name and description.
pelican-quickstart
Note: Make sure you decided on a catchy name!
Pick a Theme
Pelican comes with a default theme, which I personally dislike. It just doesn't capture my personality very well. Luckily there is a site called pelican themes that will give us a good selection of 3rd party themes we can use on our site.
I personally really like the flex theme. Clone the theme of your choice and prep for your first blog post. Make sure you setup your pelicanconf.py file as deemed via the README in the themes repo.
Create your first post
Write your first post in markdown and place it inside the content folder.
Compile your blog.
Time to have pelican generate your static HTML blog for you! Just run the command below.
pelican
Simply upload your output folder and enjoy!