Getting Started

Bark is a documentation server: point it at a folder of Markdown and it serves a full site, navigation, search, and all. This guide gets a copy running locally.

Want to know why it is built this way first? Read What is Bark?. Otherwise, keep going.

Installation ​

Docker is the fastest path and the one this guide uses. Without it, Deploy covers Windows/IIS, a Linux release zip, and building from source.

Create a docker-compose.yml:

services:
  bark:
    image: ghcr.io/melosso/bark:latest
    container_name: bark
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - ./docs:/app/docs

The ./docs volume is your content: Markdown files plus an optional config.json. Bark reads everything from there.

docker compose up -d

Open http://localhost:8080. That is the whole setup.

File structure ​

docs/
├── config.json                      ← Configuration file (optional)
├── index.md                         ← Homepage
├── guide/
│   ├── getting-started.md           ← Served at /guide/getting-started
│   ├── configuration.md
│   ├── routing.md
│   └── deploy.md
└── reference/
    ├── site-config.md
    ├── api-reference.md
    └── sitemap-generation.md

Your folder layout becomes the site's navigation and URLs. No index to maintain.

What's next ​

• Configuration: config.json options, themes, and branding.
• Routing: the exact rules for turning a file path into a URL.
• Using Markdown: every Markdown extension Bark supports, with live examples.
• Frontmatter: every field a page can set.
• Deploy: Docker, IIS, Linux, or source, plus the production defaults Bark ships with.