Install Project Broadsheet

Download the source, install its dependencies, and start a local preview server. The entire process takes less than two minutes on a modern machine.

Project Broadsheet is a static site built with Eleventy, so the only prerequisite is Node.js — the JavaScript runtime used to run the build. If you haven't installed Node yet, download it from nodejs.org. Version 18 or later is required.

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/jonajinga/broadsheet.git my-publication
cd my-publication

Cloning copies the full source code of Project Broadsheet onto your machine. Rename my-publication to whatever fits your project — this becomes the folder you work in.

Install dependencies

npm install

npm install reads the package.json file and downloads the supporting packages Project Broadsheet needs: Eleventy, Pagefind (the search index builder), an RSS plugin, an HTML minifier, and a handful of utilities. None of them run in production — they only build the site.

Expect about a minute on a typical home connection.

Run the preview server

npm start

This starts a local preview server with automatic reloading. Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser. When you edit a file, the browser refreshes on its own so you can see changes immediately.

Build for production

npm run build

A production build writes the finished website to a folder called _site/. That folder contains every page as a plain HTML file, every stylesheet, every image, and the Pagefind search index. You can upload _site/ to any static host (Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, Vercel, even a USB drive served as a web folder).

What to do next

• Configure site.json — set your publication name, editorial sections, and integrations.
• Customize the design tokens — colors, typography, spacing, and brand.
• Write your first article — create your first Markdown file.