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https://github.com/felixge/node-romulus

Building static empires with node.js.
https://github.com/felixge/node-romulus

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Building static empires with node.js.

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README 

        
# romulus



Building static empires with node.js.



**Install:** `[sudo] npm install -g romulus`



[![Romulus](romulus.jpg)](romulus.jpg)



## Features



Romulus is a static site generator (like jekyll) featuring:



* a clear folder convention

* ejs template processing

* generating css from less files

* github flavored markdown

* a local development server behaving like github pages

* deploying to github pages



**Planned:**



* page scripts that run before rendering

* partials that can be included on any page

* plugins (themes, blogging, google analytics, disqus, etc.)



You should use romulus if you want a simple tool for creating static github

pages with node.js.



## Creating a static page



Create a new directory, and inside this directory create the folder structure below:



**Note:** Only the `pages` folder is required, the other folders are optional.



```

/pages

/layouts

/public

```



Now create a file called `pages/index.html` and put some HTML into it:



```html

Hello World


```



Run this to build your static site:



```bash

$ romulus build my-site

```



You should now see a new folder called `my-site` containing your `index.html`

page exactly as you wrote it.



**Note:** If you ommit the `my-site` argument, romulus will default to naming

your output folder `build`.



For testing your site, you should run the local development server at

[http://localhost:8080/](http://localhost:8080/) by typing this:



```bash

$ romulus

```



## Layouts



In order to make this more interesting, let's say you want to wrap your new

page in a fancy layout. To do this you need to change your `pages/index.html`

file like this:



```html

<% this.layout = 'default' %>

Hello World


```



Now you need to create the layout itself, so add a file called

`layouts/default.html`:



```html



  

    

    My static empire



    

    

    

    

  

  

    
My Header


    <%- page %>

  



```



That's it, you should now see your page being rendered inside your template!



## Accessing page variables in your layout



Let's say you want to set a `title` variable in your page that should be used

by the layout. For this, add this to your page template:



```html

<% this.title = 'My title'; %>

```



And output it in your layout like this:



```html

<%= this.title %>

```



## Generating css from less files



Now that you have this wonderful site, you probably want to style it. To do so,

create a file called `public/css/main.less`:



```css

body{

  h1{

    color: #0080FF;

  }

}

```



Sweet, your headline is now featuring my favorite color!



## Static file support



Any file placed in the `public` folder will be included at the top level of the

build output folder. The local development server also supports serving them.



## Using markdown



romulus natively supports

[github flavored markdown](https://github.com/isaacs/github-flavored-markdown)

for page files. Using markdown is as easy as creating a file with

a `.md` extension like `pages/markdown-rocks.md` and adding some markdown to it:



```html

<% this.layout = 'default'; %>



Markdown is **fun**, and you can still use EJS inside of your markdown

templates.

```



This page now will be served at `/markdown-rocks`.



## Deploying to github pages



Deploying to github pages is as simple as:



```

romulus deploy

```



This should work well for project pages, but has not been tested for

organization pages yet.



## License



MIT License.