Building an optimized site¶

Material for MkDocs, by default, allows to build optimized sites that rank great on search engines, load fast (even on slow networks), and work perfectly without JavaScript. Additionally, the built-in optimize plugin adds support for further useful automatic optimization techniques.

Configuration¶

Built-in projects plugin¶

insiders-4.38.0 projects – built-in

The built-in projects plugin allows to split your documentation into multiple distinct MkDocs projects, build them concurrently and serve them together. Add the following to mkdocs.yml:

plugins:
  - projects

For a list of all settings, please consult the plugin documentation.

Use cases for the projects plugin

Ideal use cases for the projects plugin are:

Building a multi-language site
Building a blog alongside your documentation
Splitting large code bases for better performance

Note that the plugin is currently experimental. We're releasing it early, so that we can improve it together with our users and make it even more powerful as we discover new use cases.

Scope¶

8.0.0

There might be a use case, where you want to share user-level settings like the selected color palette, or cookie consent across all projects. To do so, add the following lines to mkdocs.yml:

extra:
  scope: /

How it works

Suppose you have this site structure:

.
└── /
    ├── subsite-a/
    ├── subsite-b/
    └── subsite-c/

By default, each site will have its own scope (/subsite-a/, /subsite-b/, /subsite-c/). To modify this behaviour, add the following lines to mkdocs.yml:

extra:
  scope: /

By setting it to /, it should allow you to share the following preferences across the main site and all subsites:

Built-in optimize plugin¶

insiders-4.29.0 optimize – built-in

The built-in optimize plugin automatically identifies and optimizes all media files as part of the build using compression and conversion techniques. Add the following lines to mkdocs.yml:

plugins:
  - optimize

For a list of all settings, please consult the plugin documentation.