How to Build a Static Blog with YiiPress Engine in Minutes

YiiPress Engine is a static website and blog generator built on the Yii3 framework. It creates fast, file‑driven sites without a database.

1. Create a new project

composer create-project yiipress/engine myblog
cd myblog

2. Configure the site

Edit content/config.yaml and set the basic site metadata and behavior:

title: 我的博客
description: 一个个人博客
base_url: https://example.com
language: zh-CN
date_format: "Y年m月d日"
entries_per_page: 10
permalink: /:collection/:slug/
taxonomies:
  - tags
  - categories

3. Create a collection

Make a directory for the collection and define its properties in content/blog/_collection.yaml:

mkdir -p content/blog

title: 博客
sort_by: date
sort_direction: desc
feed: true
listing: true

4. Write the first article

Create a markdown file content/blog/2026-02-24-hello-world.md with front‑matter and content:

---
title: "你好，世界"
tags:
  - 通用
---

欢迎来到我的博客！这是我的第一篇文章。

## 什么是 YiiPress？

YiiPress 是一款基于 Yii3 构建的静态博客引擎，具备以下特点：
- 极致速度
- 纯文件驱动（无需数据库）
- 支持插件扩展

5. Create a standalone page

Example page content/about.md:

---
title: "关于"
---

这是我的个人博客，我会在这里分享编程相关的文章。

6. Add a navigation menu

Define the menu in content/navigation.yaml:

main:
  - title: 首页
    url: /
  - title: 博客
    url: /blog/
  - title: 关于
    url: /about/

7. Build the site

Run the build command. The generated static HTML files are placed under the output/ directory, with subfolders for blog posts, pages, tags, sitemap and RSS feeds.

make yii build

8. Local preview

Start the development server and open the site in a browser: make up Visit http://localhost:8087 (the port can be changed in docker/.env).

Build options

Include drafts and future‑dated articles: make yii build -- --drafts --future Speed up with multiple workers: make yii build -- --workers=4 Force cache clean and rebuild: make yii build -- --no-cache For additional documentation see the repository at https://github.com/yiipress/engine/tree/master/docs.