Static Site Generator
Originally this site was built using Jekyll, specifically a preconfigured kit designed by Barry Clark called Jekyll Now.
I ended up rolling my own version because:
- I didn't want to have to maintain a Ruby project locally just to preview my site
- Jekyll's "Liquid templating engine" is another language to learn
- reinventing wheels can be a fun, educational experience
Currently this software is useful to me, and probably just me. But still, here's some more information about it.
Features
One script (newpost.ijs) generates a mostly empty blog post, with the filename in the right format. Another script (makesite.ijs) builds the site as a whole:
- concatenate the header and footer html around every page
- create previous/next links for each blog post
- generate a table of contents
Some to-dos for this script include generating a sitemap and atom feed.
Usage
My workflow is very simple and fairly manual, but it's easy for me to understand.
- Navigate to the site's repo in the terminal
- Start an http server locally with python -m SimpleHTTPServer.
- Create a new post with ./newpost.ijs.
- Write a post in HTML, occasionally check the build with ./makesite.ijs.
- Push to GitHub when done.