Installation and usage

You can download and install either the full desktop edition or the command line edition from the download page – both include the command line interface.

All remaining sections on this page will assume that you already have a site directory to work with - if you don't, you can simply create an empty folder on your disk (anywhere you like), for instance by running the command below, and that will be your site directory:

mkdir my-site-dir

Running the editor

Simply pass the site directory path to hyper8 and it will start a web server hosting the graphical editor. You can open the displayed address in your browser and then perform every action that the desktop application provides as well (authoring, previewing, building and deploying your site).

hyper8 my-site-dir

You can press Ctrl+C to shut down the editor at any point.

Building (and previewing) the site

The --build option (short: -b) will build the site:

hyper8 my-site-dir --build

With the added --preview flag (short: -p) the site will be opened in the browser afterwards:

hyper8 my-site-dir --build --preview

Deploying the site

If you've already set up a deployment configuration for your site you can deploy it straight from the command line interface by adding the --deploy (short: -d) option:

hyper8 my-site-dir --build --deploy

Manually setting the build directory

By default, Hyper 8 will generate the site inside a .hyper8_build/ directory that is placed at the root of your site directory (e.g. my-site-dir/.hyper8_build/).

If you want to build (or if you will, locally deploy) the site to another directory on your disk you can pass an option to do so, but please read the warning first:

WARNING: The build directory gets WIPED during each build. Specifying the wrong directory can lead to severe loss of data, so triple check what you pass here.

With that covered, here is the magic option to override the build directory:

hyper8 my-site-dir --build --build-dir [danger-this-path-will-be-wiped]

Using Hyper 8 without the graphical editor

You can populate and configure your site by putting content in your site directory, using solely your file browser, text editor, terminal, custom scripts, or whichever workflow you aim for or prefer.

How this works is thoroughly explained in the Site directory specification and Site directory examples sections. For a quick introduction there is also a video showcasing the process at simonrepp.com/video/hyper8/without-editor.