So here it is. I've been working on a static site generator for the past couple of weeks and I finally have things put together enough to start running my site off of it. The project is called markd and it's hosted on github.
The overview of how the system works is you create files (posts) that are written in Markdown syntax. markd will then generate a static HTML version of your blog from those files. It makes everything you see here.
I would say it's still very alpha at the moment, and even when it is stable it will still be something of more interest to developers rather than the average blogger. The installation and setup instructions basically don't exist, but will be coming in the future.
Here are the basic reasons why I wrote it:
- I needed a new hobby project :)
- Having a static HTML site just seemed to make sense for various reasons
- It was a bit of an exercise in some development areas that I wanted to work out
- Creating Markdown files is so easy and the way I have this all set up, makes writing a new post both simple and something I can easily enjoy in my favorite text editor
- Really, it's just something that I had a strong interest in and decided to run with it. I'm happy with how it's turned out.
If you're curious how it works, here is how I have things set up:
- I write blog posts in a text editor, with the Markdown syntax. They're saved on Dropbox so I can access them from any computer.
- I run markd which is a PHP-CLI set of scripts that generates the HTML for my home page, single post pages, archives, etc.
- Those files are then automatically published to my web server using a set of not-included shell scripting.
I'm enjoying working on it and have plans for things to do in the future like enhancing the theme engine, adding hooks for a plugin system and support for some different post formats. At this point you might be thinking this is starting to sound a lot like WordPress, or many of the other blogging engines, including the others that create static sites. Well, you'd be correct.
I wanted this project to do things the way I wanted them done. It's definitely taking hints from WordPress, and I also intend to take some hints from the Carrington Theme Framework for the theme engine.
I'm looking forward to where this might go. Who knows, maybe working on markd might get me blogging frequently again since I'll be developing it and want to try things out.
