website

website is a website compiler, that creates websites from HTML.

Oh great! Now, of what use is this?

Have you ever struggled with WYSIWYG editors or substitute markup, that just doesn't do what you want? Do you wish you could just use plain old HTML, when you look up, how a table is marked up in MediaWiki syntax?

This was my line of thought, when I wanted to start a blog. I know HTML, so why use another markup language? I want all the freedom of direct source code editing without the hassle of managing manually a dozen headers and footers. I don't need a shiny database just to display a tagcloud of my articles. And I want a simple way to embed metadata.

Therefore I wrote this Python framework, that takes a bunch of HTML stubs and converts it to a fully functional website. Take a look at this file:

 Title: My First Post
    Date: 2011-01-01
    Subject: blog, Python, simple, usable

    < p >This is my first post.< /p >
    < ul >
      < li >Look! A list!< /li >
    < /ul >

The format is oriented towards HTTP. First there are header lines, that describe metadata. Then a blank line. And then full-power awesome HTML markup with all the shiny HTML5 features ready to be used inline. What could be simpler than that?

You can also define shortcuts to be used in your markup! No, that's not another micro-markup invented. It's just an typing easement.

< a href="g:import+website" >Search "import website"
      with Google< /a >

How do I use it?

I hope to create a deployment script somewhen in the nearer future. Until then, you will have to do a little bit work:

$ git clone http://github.com/Boldewyn/website.git
    $ mkdir my_website
    $ cd my_website
    $ mkdir _articles
    $ cat URL = "http://example.com/"
    > TITLE = "My new blog"
    > CONFIG
    $ # create articles as HTML files in _articles:
    $ vi _articles/first_post.html
    $ # embed all other content directly:
    $ touch style.css
    $ ../website/__main__.py
    $ ls
    _articles/
    _config.py
    site/
    style.css
    $ ls site
    site/archive/
    site/feed.xml
    site/first_post.html
    site/index.html
    site/sitemap.xml
    site/style.css
    site/tag/
    $ # The ready compiled site is in my_website/site/

All files in my_website, that start with an underscore "_" will not be copied to site/.

If you encounter problems, don't hesitate to file a bug at http://github.com/Boldewyn/website/issues.

Requirements:

• Python