Setting Up a Gatsby Site without the `gatsby new` Command

There are many Enterprise level companies that maintain an internal clone of the NPM registry for security purposes. If you work for such a company, you may find that you are able to successfully run npm install -g gatsby-cli but cannot run the gatsby new <project-source> as the gatsby new command clones a repo from a public GitHub repository. Many companies block public GitHub, which will cause the gatsby new command to fail. Not to worry, though, you can set up a new Gatsby site without the gatsby new command with a few quick steps.

Preparing your environment

To get started with Gatsby, you’ll need to make sure you have the following software tools installed:

1. Node.js
2. npm CLI
3. Gatsby CLI

For step-by-step installation instructions and detailed explanations of the required software, head on over to the Gatsby tutorial.

After your developer environment is set up, you’ll want to set up a new project folder.

mkdir my-new-gatsby-site
cd my-new-gatsby-site

Next, you’ll need to set up NPM within your project.

npm init

Fill out the prompts for the package.json file that is generated. If you’d like to skip that, you can run npm init -y and a pre-filled package.json will be generated for you.

Now, you’ll need to install the necessary packages that Gatsby relies on to work its magic.

npm install --save gatsby react react-dom

Next, you’ll add a src directory and a pages directory inside your project.

mkdir src
cd src
mkdir pages

Inside the pages directory, you’ll make an index.js file that exports a React component.

cd pages
touch index.js

Now, add some React code to your index.js file as a starting point for your project.

import React from "react"

export default () => <h1>Hello Gatsby!</h1>

Finally, go back to the root of your project and run the gatsby develop command to start a development server and begin coding.

cd ../../
gatsby develop

And that’s it! You should now have your initial page running on localhost:8000 with a GraphiQL IDE running on localhost:8000/___graphql. From here, you can follow the rest of the Gatsby tutorial starting with setting up a code editor to get the full experience of what Gatsby can offer.