ERROR - Config value: 'theme'. Error: Unrecognised theme name:

Question

The solution to similar issues on Github about this all point to installing MkDocs or the theme with a package manager and not pip. However, I have installed both with pip.

1. Installed MkDocs with pip (not a package manager)
2. Installed n number of MkDocs themes with pip
3. updated mkdocs.yaml to add:

theme:
   name: '{name_of_theme}'

4. then

mkdocs serve

5. result

ERROR   -  Config value: 'theme'. Error: Unrecognised theme name: '{name_of_theme}'. The available installed themes are: mkdocs, readthedocs 

What am I missing?

Answer 1

Had the same problem with mkdocs-material. In my case this originated from a faulty installation of the theme. From the mkdocs-material FAQ:

1. Check if mkdoc is correctly installed: mkdocs --version. You should get the version and installed path back.
2. Check if the theme is correctly installed: mkdocs serve --help. You should get a list of parameters. Check this entry if you theme name appears: -t, --theme [material|mkdocs|readthedocs] (in this case "material")

If your theme name is missing, try reinstalling it. In my case, I had used the python -m pip flag with mkdocs and needed to do the same with the theme:

python -m pip install mkdocs
python -m pip install mkdocs-material