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https://github.com/sunainapai/makesite

Simple, lightweight, and magic-free static site/blog generator for Python coders
https://github.com/sunainapai/makesite

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Simple, lightweight, and magic-free static site/blog generator for Python coders

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README 

        
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!



[![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)

* [FAQ](#faq)

* [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

        `` and ``, and ends with ``. 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 `` and does not contain the `` and `` 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:



    {{  }}



Any whitespace before `{{`, around ``, and after `}}` is ignored.

The `` 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:



    



Any whitespace before, after, and around the `` tokens are ignored. Here are some example headers:



    

    

    



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:



        



  - 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)



FAQ

---



Here are some frequently asked questions along with answers to them:



 1. Can you add feature X to this project?



    I do not have any plans to add new features to this project. It is

    intended to be as minimal and as simple as reasonably possible. This

    project is meant to be a quick-starter-kit for developers who want

    to develop their own static site generators. Someone who needs more

    features is free to fork this project repository and customize the

    project as per their needs in their own fork.



 2. Can you add support for Jinja templates, YAML front matter, etc.?



    I will not add or accept support for Jinja templates, YAML front

    matter, etc. in this project. However, you can do so in your fork.

    The reasons are explained in the first point.



 3. Do you accept any new features from the contributors?



    I do not accept any new features in this project. The reasons are

    explained in the first point.



 4. Do you accept bug fixes and improvements?



    Yes, I accept bug fixes and minor improvements that do not increase

    the scope and complexity of this project.



 5. Are there any contribution guidelines?



    Yes, please see [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md).



 6. How do I add my own copyright notice to the source code without

    violating the terms of license while customizing this project in my

    own fork?



    This project is released under the terms of the MIT license. One of

    the terms of the license is that the original copyright notice and

    the license text must be preserved. However, at the same time, when

    you edit and customize this project in your own fork, you hold the

    copyright to your changes. To fulfill both conditions, please add

    your own copyright notice above the original copyright notice and

    clarify that your software is a derivative of the original.



    Here is an example of such a notice where a person named J. Doe

    wants to reserve all rights to their changes:



        # Copyright (c) 2018-2019 J. Doe

        # All rights reserved



        # This software is a derivative of the original makesite.py.

        # The license text of the original makesite.py is included below.



    Anything similar to the above notice or something to this effect is

    sufficient.



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

.