Static Sites and API docs with Sphinx, Python, and Markdown Course

1.3 hours, 100% free
Take this course for FREE

Course Summary

This free course will teach you to build better documentation for your libraries, as well as stand-alone static courses in general, using Markdown and Sphinx. While Sphinx is usually associated with reStructuredText, the techniques taught in this course show you how to make Markdown a first-class citizen.

What students are saying

Watching Effective PyCharm from Talk Python. I’ve been using PyCharm for a long time and it’s really powerful, but wow I was barely scratching the surface with all the shortcuts and optimizations. I highly recommend this course if you are using PyCharm, it’s fantastic.
-- Sean

What's this course about and how is it different?

Everybody knows Sphinx for documenting projects, Python and otherwise. But few think of Sphinx for the rest of a website.

Why? Because Sphinx traditionally means authoring with reStructuredText instead of Markdown. While RST is very powerful, it's a bit quirky, and nowhere near the popularity of Markdown.

But with the arrival of full Markdown support MyST, and with static site generators having a renaissance, it's time to give Sphinx a second look. Sphinx is an "information-rich" static site generator, with rich linking and many other features for authoring a knowledge base.

This course introduces Sphinx for websites, shows enabling MyST for Markdown, and compares what it has to offer versus other approaches.

In this course, you will:

  • Get a website started, powered by Sphinx, but with MyST to allow authoring in Markdown
  • Use simple, normal Markdown syntax for your basic authoring needs
  • See how to tap into the deeper power of Sphinx via Markdown: linking, code examples, and structure
  • And lots more

View the full course outline.

Who is this course for?

Anyone who knows a little Markdown and can execute Python code to generate powerful and flexible static web sites and documentation.

What will we build?

Demo app from the course

Above you see the static site we'll be building during this course. Feel free to visit our hosted version and explore it.

Follow along with subtitles and transcripts

Each course comes with subtitles and full transcripts. The transcripts are available as a separate searchable page for each lecture. They also are available in course-wide search results to help you find just the right lecture.

Each course has subtitles available in the video player.

Who am I? Why should you take my course?

Who is Paul Everitt? Hi there! I'm Paul Everitt, Python and Web developer advocate at JetBrains. I've been involved with Python since 1993.

You can find me speaking at Python conferences, hosting webcasts on JetBrains' YouTube chanel, blogging, and supporting the developer community.

Free office hours keep you from getting stuck

One of the challenges of self-paced online learning is getting stuck. It can be hard to get the help you need to get unstuck.

That's why at Talk Python Training, we offer live, online office hours. You drop in and join a group of fellow students to chat about your course progress and see solutions via screen sharing.

Just visit your account page to see the upcoming office hour schedule.

Is this course based on Python 3 or Python 2?

This course is based upon Python 3. Python 2 is officially unsupported as of January 1st, 2020 and we believe that it would be ill-advised to teach or learn Python 2. This course is, and has always been, built around Python 3.

This course is delivered in very high resolution

Example of 1440p high res video

This course is delivered in 1440p (4x the pixels as 720p). When you're watching the videos for this course, it will feel like you're sitting next to the instructor looking at their screen.

Every little detail, menu item, and icon is clear and crisp. Watch the introductory video at the top of this page to see an example.

The time to act is now

Use Markdown and Sphinx to build your next web project.

Course Outline: Chapters and Lectures

Welcome to the course
1:08
Sphinx? Sphinx!
1:08
Setup
12:42
Our scenario
0:40
Creating a new project
1:08
Installing Sphinx
1:43
Making a Sphinx site
1:53
Live reload
2:44
Adding Markdown
1:19
First Markdown page
1:36
Clean up
1:39
Simple Markdown
9:52
Background on Markdown
0:40
Formatting
4:34
Images
3:21
What this means for Sphinx
1:17
More Authoring
16:26
Introduction to More Authoring
1:07
Images
5:43
TOC: Table of Contents
4:29
Downloads
3:16
Serverless search
1:51
Linking
12:52
Introduction to Linking
0:12
How Sphinx linking works
1:54
Markdown linking
3:08
Headings and roles
5:04
More on linking
2:34
Documenting Code
17:08
Introduction to Documenting Code
0:27
Code in a document
5:54
Including code from a file
4:52
Configuring autodoc
2:13
Documenting a Module
3:42
Linking between sites
6:48
Introduction to Linking Between Sites
0:43
Setting up intersphinx
1:27
Linking to remote documents
4:38
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