Running the built site locally

After building your Markspresso site, you will usually want to preview the static output in a browser using a simple HTTP server.

1. Build your site

From your site root, run:

lucli markspresso build --clean

By default this will write the generated HTML into public/. In this project (the Markspresso docs itself), the output is configured to docs/, but the commands below work the same way regardless of the output directory.

2. Start a local server with LuCLI

Use LuCLI's server start command to serve the built output directory:

lucli server start --disable-lucee ./public

or, if your markspresso.json is configured to output into docs/ (like this repository):

lucliserver start --disable-lucee ./docs

Then open the printed URL (usually http://localhost:8888/ or similar) in your browser.

Why `--disable-lucee`?

Passing --disable-lucee tells the Lucee server to treat the directory as a pure static site:

Static assets and .html files are served directly by the web server.
CFML processing is turned off, so CFML templates (.cfm, .cfc) are not executed.

For Markspresso output this is exactly what you want: the final HTML that Markspresso generated should take priority and be served as-is, without any Lucee/CFML processing getting in the way.

3. Iterating while you work

A common workflow when writing docs or posts is:

Run lucli markspresso watch in one terminal to rebuild on changes.
Run lucli server start --disable-lucee ./public (or ./docs) in another terminal.
Edit Markdown/layouts and refresh your browser to see the latest build.

Running the built site locally