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makesite.py
===========
Take full control of your static website/blog generation by writing your
own simple, lightweight, and magic-free static site generator in
Python. That's right! Reinvent the wheel, fellas!
[![View Source][SOURCE-BADGE]](makesite.py)
[![View Demo][DEMO-BADGE]](https://tmug.github.io/makesite-demo)
[![MIT License][LICENSE-BADGE]](LICENSE.md)
[SOURCE-BADGE]: https://img.shields.io/badge/view-source-brightgreen.svg
[DEMO-BADGE]: https://img.shields.io/badge/view-demo-brightgreen.svg
[LICENSE-BADGE]: https://img.shields.io/badge/license-MIT-blue.svg
Contents
--------
* [Introduction](#introduction)
* [But Why?](#but-why)
* [Get Started](#get-started)
* [The Code](#the-code)
* [Layout](#layout)
* [Content](#content)
* [Credits](#credits)
* [License](#license)
* [Support](#support)
Introduction
------------
This repository contains the source code of an example website
containing two static blogs and a few static pages. The website can be
generated by running [makesite.py](makesite.py). The output looks like
[this](https://tmug.github.io/makesite-demo). That's it!
So go ahead, fork this repository, replace the [content](content) with
your own, and generate your static website. It's that simple!
You are [free](LICENSE.md) to copy, use, and modify this project for
your blog or website, so go ahead and fork this repository and make it
your own project. Change the [layout](layout) if you wish to, improve
the [stylesheet](static/css/style.css) to suit your taste, enhance
[makesite.py](makesite.py) if you need to, and develop your website/blog
just the way you want it.
But Why?
--------
For fun and profit! Okay, maybe not for profit, but hopefully for fun.
Have you used a popular static site generator like Jekyll to generate
your blog? I have too. It is simple and great. But then did you yearn
to use something even simpler to generate your blog? Do you like Python?
Perhaps the thought of writing your own static site generator crossed
your mind but you thought it would be too much work? If you answered
"yes" to these questions, then this project is for you.
With [makesite.py](makesite.py), you are in full control. There is no
hidden magic! There is no need to read any documentation to understand
how it works. There is no need to learn how to write configuration files
to produce some desired effect.
With [makesite.py](makesite.py):
- The code is the documentation.
- The code is the configuration.
Everything is laid out as plain and simple Python code for you to read
and enhance. It is less than 130 lines of code (excluding comments,
docstrings, and blank lines). It gets you off the ground pretty quickly.
You only need to execute `makesite.py`.
You can develop a decent website/blog within a few minutes and then you
can begin tinkering with the [source code](makesite.py), the
[layout](layout), and the [stylesheet](static/css/style.css) to
customize the look and feel of your website to your satisfaction.
Get Started
-----------
This section provides some quick steps to get you off the ground as
quickly as possible.
1. For a quick demo on your local system, just enter this command:
make serve
If you don't have `make` but have Python 3.x, enter this command:
python3 makesite.py
cd _site
python3 -m http.server
Note: In some environments, you may need to use `python` instead of
`python3` to invoke Python 3.x.
If you only have Python 2.7, enter this command:
python makesite.py
cd _site
python -m SimpleHTTPServer
Then visit http://localhost:8000/. It should look like
[this](https://tmug.github.io/makesite-demo).
Note: You can run [makesite.py](makesite.py) with Python 2.7 or
Python 3.x.
2. You may see a few `Cannot render Markdown` warning messages in the
output of the previous command. This is due to the fact that an
example [blog](content/blog) in this project has a few posts written
in Markdown. To render them correctly, install the `commonmark`
package with this command:
pip install commonmark
Then try the previous step again.
3. For an Internet-facing website, you would be hosting the static
website/blog on a hosting service and/or with a web server such as
Apache HTTP Server, Nginx, etc. You probably only need to generate
the static files and know where the static files are and move them
to your hosting location.
If you have the `make` command, enter this command to generate your
website:
make site
If you don't have `make` but have `python3`, enter this command:
python3 makesite.py
Note: In some environments, you may need to use `python` instead of
`python3` to invoke Python 3.x.
If you only have `python`, enter this command:
python makesite.py
The `_site` directory contains the entire generated website. The
content of this directory may be copied to your website hosting
location.
The Code
--------
Now that you know how to generate the static website that comes with
this project, it is time to see what [makesite.py](makesite.py) does.
You probably don't really need to read the entire section. The source
code is pretty self-explanatory but just in case, you need a detailed
overview of what it does, here are the details:
1. The `main()` function is the starting point of website generation.
It calls the other functions necessary to get the website generation
done.
2. First it creates a fresh new `_site` directory from scratch. All
files in the [static directory](static) are copied to this
directory. Later the static website is generated and written to this
directory.
3. Then it creates a `params` dictionary with some default parameters.
This dictionary is passed around to other functions. These other
functions would pick values from this dictionary to populate
placeholders in the layout template files.
Let us take the `subtitle` parameter for example. It is set
to our example website's fictitious brand name: "Lorem Ipsum". We
want each page to include this brand name as a suffix in the title.
For example, the [about page](https://tmug.github.io/makesite-demo/about/)
has "About - Lorem Ipsum" in its title. Now take a look at the
[page layout template](layout/page.html) that is used as the layout
for all pages in the static website. This layout file uses the
`{{ subtitle }}` syntax to denote that it is a placeholder that
should be populated while rendering the template.
Another interesting thing to note is that a content file can
override these parameters by defining its own parameters in the
content header. For example, take a look at the content file for
the [home page](content/_index.html). In its content header, i.e.,
the HTML comments at the top with key-value pairs, it defines a new
parameter named `title` and overrides the `subtitle` parameter.
We will discuss the syntax for placeholders and content headers
later. It is quite simple.
4. It then loads all the layout templates. There are 6 of them in this
project.
- [layout/page.html](layout/page.html): It contains the base
template that applies to all pages. It begins with
`<!DOCTYPE html>` and `<html>`, and ends with `</html>`. The
`{{ content }}` placeholder in this template is replaced with
the actual content of the page. For example, for the about page,
the `{{ content }}` placeholder is replaced with the the entire
content from [content/about.html](content/about.html). This is
done with the `make_pages()` calls further down in the code.
- [layout/post.html](layout/post.html): It contains the template
for the blog posts. Note that it does not begin with `<!DOCTYPE
html>` and does not contain the `<html>` and `</html>` tags.
This is not a complete standalone template. This template
defines only a small portion of the blog post pages that are
specific to blog posts. It contains the HTML code and the
placeholders to display the title, publication date, and author
of blog posts.
This template must be combined with the
[page layout template](layout/page.html) to create the final
standalone template. To do so, we replace the `{{ content }}`
placeholder in the [page layout template](layout/page.html) with
the HTML code in the [post layout template](layout/post.html) to
get a final standalone template. This is done with the
`render()` calls further down in the code.
The resulting standalone template still has a `{{ content }}`
placeholder from the [post layout template](layout/post.html)
template. This `{{ content }}` placeholder is then replaced
with the actual content from the [blog posts](content/blog).
- [layout/list.html](layout/list.html): It contains the template
for the blog listing page, the page that lists all the posts in
a blog in reverse chronological order. This template does not do
much except provide a title at the top and an RSS link at the
bottom. The `{{ content }}` placeholder is populated with the
list of blog posts in reverse chronological order.
Just like the [post layout template](layout/post.html) , this
template must be combined with the
[page layout template](layout/page.html) to arrive at the final
standalone template.
- [layout/item.html](layout/item.html): It contains the template
for each blog post item in the blog listing page. The
`make_list()` function renders each blog post item with this
template and inserts them into the
[list layout template](layout/list.html) to create the blog
listing page.
- [layout/feed.xml](layout/feed.xml): It contains the XML template
for RSS feeds. The `{{ content }}` placeholder is populated with
the list of feed items.
- [layout/item.xml](layout/item.xml): It contains the XML template for
each blog post item to be included in the RSS feed. The
`make_list()` function renders each blog post item with this
template and inserts them into the
[layout/feed.xml](layout/feed.xml) template to create the
complete RSS feed.
5. After loading all the layout templates, it makes a `render()` call
to combine the [post layout template](layout/post.html) with the
[page layout template](layout/page.html) to form the final
standalone post template.
Similarly, it combines the [list layout template](layout/list.html)
template with the [page layout template](layout/page.html) to form
the final list template.
6. Then it makes two `make_pages()` calls to render the home page and a
couple of other site pages: the [contact page](content/contact.html)
and the [about page](content/about.html).
7. Then it makes two more `make_pages()` calls to render two blogs: one
that is named simply [blog](content/blog) and another that is named
[news](content/news).
Note that the `make_pages()` call accepts three positional
arguments:
- Path to content source files provided as a glob pattern.
- Output path template as a string.
- Layout template code as a string.
These three positional arguments are then followed by keyword
arguments. These keyword arguments are used as template parameters
in the output path template and the layout template to replace the
placeholders with their corresponding values.
As described in point 2 above, a content file can override these
parameters in its content header.
8. Then it makes two `make_list()` calls to render the blog listing
pages for the two blogs. These calls are very similar to the
`make_pages()` calls. There are only two things that are different
about the `make_list()` calls:
- There is no point in reading the same blog posts again that were
read by `make_pages()`, so instead of passing the path to
content source files, we feed a chronologically reverse-sorted
index of blog posts returned by `make_pages()` to `make_list()`.
- There is an additional argument to pass the
[item layout template](layout/item.html) as a string.
9. Finally it makes two more `make_list()` calls to generate the RSS
feeds for the two blogs. There is nothing different about these
calls than the previous ones except that we use the feed XML
templates here to generate RSS feeds.
To recap quickly, we create a `_site` directory to write the static site
generated, define some default parameters, load all the layout
templates, and then call `make_pages()` to render pages and blog posts
with these templates, call `make_list()` to render blog listing pages
and RSS feeds. That's all!
Take a look at how the `make_pages()` and `make_list()` functions are
implemented. They are very simple with less than 20 lines of code each.
Once you are comfortable with this code, you can begin modifying it to
add more blogs or reduce them. For example, you probably don't need a
news blog, so you may delete the `make_pages()` and `make_list()` calls
for `'news'` along with its content at [content/news](content/news).
Layout
------
In this project, the layout template files are located in the [layout
directory](layout). But they don't necessarily have to be there. You can
place the layout files wherever you want and update
[makesite.py](makesite.py) accordingly.
The source code of [makesite.py](makesite.py) that comes with this
project understands the notion of placeholders in the layout templates.
The template placeholders have the following syntax:
{{ <key> }}
Any whitespace before `{{`, around `<key>`, and after `}}` is ignored.
The `<key>` should be a valid Python identifier. Here is an example of
template placeholder:
{{ title }}
This is a very simple template mechanism that is implemented already in
the [makesite.py](makesite.py). For a simple website or blog, this
should be sufficient. If you need a more sophisticated template engine
such as [Jinja2](http://jinja.pocoo.org/) or
[Cheetah](https://pythonhosted.org/Cheetah/), you need to modify
[makesite.py](makesite.py) to add support for it.
Content
-------
In this project, the content files are located in the [content
directory](content). Most of the content files are written in HTML.
However, the content files for the blog named [blog](content/blog) are
written in Markdown.
The notion of headers in the content files is supported by
[makesite.py](makesite.py). Each content file may begin with one or more
consecutive HTML comments that contain headers. Each header has the
following syntax:
<!-- <key>: <value> -->
Any whitespace before, after, and around the `<!--`, `<key>`, `:`,
`<value>`, and `-->` tokens are ignored. Here are some example headers:
<!-- title: About -->
<!-- subtitle: Lorem Ipsum -->
<!-- author: Admin -->
It looks for the headers at the top of every content file. As soon as
some non-header text is encountered, the rest of the content from that
point is not checked for headers.
By default, placeholders in content files are not populated during
rendering. This behaviour is chosen so that you can write content freely
without having to worry about makesite interfering with the content,
i.e., you can write something like `{{ title }}` in the content and
makesite would leave it intact by default.
However if you do want to populate the placeholders in a content file,
you need to specify a parameter named `render` with value of `yes`. This
can be done in two ways:
- Specify the parameter in a header in the content file in the
following manner:
<!-- render: yes -->
- Specify the parameter as a keyword argument in `make_pages` call.
For example:
blog_posts = make_pages('content/blog/*.md',
'_site/blog/{{ slug }}/index.html',
post_layout, blog='blog', render='yes',
**params)
Credits
-------
Thanks to:
- [Susam Pal](https://github.com/susam) for the initial documentation
and the initial unit tests.
- [Keith Gaughan](https://github.com/kgaughan) for an improved
single-pass rendering of templates.
License
-------
This is free and open source software. You can use, copy, modify,
merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of it,
under the terms of the [MIT License](LICENSE.md).
This software is provided "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
express or implied. See the [MIT License](LICENSE.md) for details.
Support
-------
To report bugs, suggest improvements, or ask questions, please visit
<https://github.com/sunainapai/makesite/issues>.
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