bengal-site-scaffold

name	bengal-site-scaffold
description	Scaffolds a new Bengal static site with config, content structure, and theme. Use when creating a new site, starting a blog, or converting a project to Bengal.

Bengal Site Scaffold

Create a new Bengal static site from scratch.

Procedure

Step 1: Create bengal.toml

At the site root:

title = "My Site"
baseurl = "https://example.com"
description = "A Bengal static site"

[build]
output_dir = "public"
content_dir = "content"

[theme]
name = "default"

Step 2: Create Content Structure

content/
├── _index.md          # Home page (required)
├── about.md           # About page
├── posts/             # Blog section
│   ├── _index.md      # Section index (type: blog)
│   └── first-post.md

Step 3: Create _index.md Files

Root index (content/_index.md):

---
title: Home
---

# Welcome

Your site content.

Section index (content/posts/_index.md):

---
type: blog
title: Posts
description: Blog posts
---

# Posts

Step 4: Create a Blog Post

---
type: blog
title: "First Post"
date: '2026-01-01'
tags: [meta, welcome]
description: My first post.
---

# First Post

Content here.

Step 5: Build and Serve

bengal build
bengal serve

Theme Setup

Bengal uses the default theme from the package. To override:

• Add templates/ at site root to override templates
• Add static/ for static assets
• Or create themes/my-theme/ with templates/ and assets/

Checklist

• bengal.toml with title, baseurl, build section
• content/_index.md (required)
• content_dir and output_dir match your layout
• Section directories have _index.md with type
• Run bengal build and bengal serve

Additional Resources

See references/site-structure.md for directory layout and config schema.