---
title: Getting Started
description: 'Getting started guide and tutorial about data portal-building with PortalJS!'
---

Welcome to the PortalJS documentation!

If you have questions about anything related to PortalJS, you're always welcome to ask our community on [GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/datopian/portaljs/discussions) or on [our chat channel on Discord](https://discord.gg/EeyfGrGu4U).

## Setup

### Prerequisites

- Node v16.20.0 LTS or Node.js 18.16.0 LTS (recommended)
- MacOS, Windows (including WSL), and Linux are supported

### Create a PortalJS app

To create a PortalJS app, open your terminal, cd into the directory you’d like to create the app in, and run the following command:

```bash
npx create-next-app my-data-portal --example https://github.com/datopian/portaljs/tree/main/examples/learn
```

> [!tip]
> You may have noticed we used the command create-next-app. That’s because PortalJS is built on the awesome NextJS react javascript framework. This means you can do everything you do with NextJS with PortalJS. Check out their docs to learn more.

### Run the development server

You now have a new directory called `my-data-portal`. Let’s cd into it and then run the following command:

```bash
npm run dev
```

This starts the NextJS (and hence PortalJS) "development server" on port 3000.

Let's check it's working and what we have! Open http://localhost:3000 from your browser.

You should see a page like this when you access http://localhost:3000. This is the starter template page which shows the most simple data portal you could have: a simple README plus csv file.

<img src="/assets/examples/basic-example.png" alt="Initial state of the PortalJS tutorial project" />

### Editing the Page

Let’s try editing the starter page.

- Make sure the development server is still running.
- Open content/index.md with your text editor.
- Find the text that says “My Dataset” and change it to “My Awesome Dataset”.
- Save the file.

After refreshing the page, you should see the new text:

<img src="/assets/docs/editing-the-page-1.png" alt="PortalJS tutorial project after a simple change is made by a user" />

Congratulations! The app is up and running and you learned how to edit a page. In the next lesson, you are going to learn how to create new datasets.

<DocsPagination next="/docs/creating-new-datasets" />