I Installed npm But Cannot Install DocPad

Question

Obviously I need to download DocPad (file(s)) before I can do an npm install, but it simply isn't clear to me what to download, etc. I know the file(s) I need are on GitHub, but I don't have the background to understand what I'm looking at. Can you give me, or point me to, a "Download DocPad for Dummies" instructions? Thank you.

Answer 1

To extend on @sindis's comment

When you install Node, you will also install npm, which serves as the node package manager.

npm allows you to install packages globally using the -g flag, which installs a package that has been published to npm (such as DocPad) to wherever the npm global installation directory is, and make DocPad's command line tools available to you.

So by installing DocPad with npm install -g [email protected] (6.78 is the version of DocPad that the command above wishes to install) we will install DocPad to the global npm installation directory, which makes the command line tool docpad available for your use.

I've updated the DocPad installation guide to be a bit clearer about this, suggestions welcome.

Answer 2

The installation of DocPad is all controlled by NPM. So once that is installed, all you should need to do to install DocPad is run the npm command, as others have said, npm install docpad -g.

Now, the gotcha in windows is that you might need to execute this command with elevated rights - ie Administrator. Windows doesn't like you installing programs in its root program directory.