NASG - not another static generator...

Nearly 20 years ago I did my very first website with a thing called Microsoft FrontPage. I loved it. Times changed, and I wrote a CMS in PHP, first with flat files, then with MySQL, then moved on to WordPress.

Now I'm back on a static generator. I love it.

WARNING: this is a personal project, scratching my itches. No warranties. If you want to deploy it on your own, feel free to, but not all the things are documented.

What does it do

• content is structured in folders
• content files are YAML frontmatter + Multimarkdown
• EXIF from images are read via exiftool this is an external dependency
• Markdown is converted with pandoc this is an external dependency

How it works

• pulls in webmentions from https://webmention.io and stores them in .md files next to the index.md of a post (see later) as: [unix epoch]-[slugified source url].md

• pulls in micropub from the queue received by the micropub receiver PHP (see later)

• finds 'redirect' files:

  • anything with a .url extension
  • content is the URL to redirect to
  • filename without extension is the slug to redirect from
  • for HTTP 302

• finds 'gone' files:

  • anything with a .del extension
  • filename without extension is the slug deleted
  • for HTTP 410

• finds content:

  • all index.md files
  • corresponding comment .md file next to it
  • the parent directory name is the post slug
  • finds all images in the same directory (.jpg, .png, .gif)
    • reads EXIF data into a hidden, .[filename].json file next to the original file
    • generates downsized and watermarked images into the build/post slug directory
    • if a .jpg if found with the same slug as the parent dir, the post will be a special photo post
  • anything else in the same directory will be copies to build/post slug

• send webmentions via https://telegraph.p3k.io/

/
├── about.html -> will be copied
├── category-1
│   ├── article-1 -> slug
│   │   └── index.md -> content file
│   │   └── extra-file.mp4 -> will be copied
│   │   └── 1509233601-domaincomentrytitle.md -> comment
│   ├── fancy-photo -> slug of photo post
│   │   └── index.md -> content
│   │   └── fancy-photo.jpg -> to downsize, watermark, get EXIF

Special features

• complete microformats2 and schema.org markup in templates
• has light/dark theme, dark by default, but supports experimental prefers-color-scheme media query
• generates 3 special PHP files:
  • search - uses and SQLite DB which is populated by Python on build
  • fallback - 404 handler to do redirects/gones, gets populated with an array of both
  • micropub - a micropub endpoint that accepts micropub content and puts the incoming payload into a json file, nothing else

Deploy

Requirements

For Debian based distributions, install the packages:

• python3
• python3-pip
• pandoc

sudo apt install python3 python3-pip pandoc

Install pipenv via pip:

sudo pip3 install pipenv

Install the pip dependency packages by using the Pipfile by running:

pipenv install

SSH (optional)

Once the build is done, NASG will attempt to sync the output folder to a remote server. It needs an entry in the ~/.ssh/config file:

Host liveserver
    HostName your.ssh.host
    User your.ssh.user
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/your.ssh.identity.file
    IdentitiesOnly yes
    ServerAliveInterval 30

Note: if you don't have this, there will be no auto upload, but the build will still succeed.

Prepare

Create a local base directory where your contents will be put into. Eg:

~/MyWebsite

Create the following directories within your base directory directory: www, nasg/templates, content/home.

Copy the templates from the templates directory to the ~/MyWebsite/nasg/templates directory.

Create a new file within the root directory called keys.py with the following content:

webmentionio = {
    'domain': 'yourdomain.com',
    'token': 'token',
    'secret': 'secret'
}

telegraph = {
    'token': 'token'
}

zapier = {
    'zapier': 'secret'
}

Add an index.md file to the ~/MyWebsite/content/home directory.

Finally, change the settings.py file, like the base path and syncserver etc. to your needs.

Run

Execute within the root folder:

./run

For more info, see: ./run -h.

Functionalities based on file extensions/names

• entry_name/index.md: main entry (YAML + Multimarkdown)
• entry_name/entry_name.jpg: photo of photo posts, only for photo posts
• entry_name/slufigiedtargeturl.ping: outgoing webmentions
• entry_name/slugifiedsourceurl.md: comments and incoming webmentions
• some_slug.del: deleted slug, shall return 410
• another_slug.url: redirection, contains redirect URL, shall return 301 or 302