Lawler.io

This is it. Everything you need to clone Lawler.io is here.

The master branch was renamed to lawler so Google and friends won't crawl its contents.

How to build this website

You need pip, the Python package manager, and a copy of Python 2.7 or 3.x:

1. pip install pelican
2. pip install Markdown
3. pip install webassets
4. dnf install yuicompressor <-- needed for webassets, which installs yuicompressor. Adjust the binary name in the YUICOMPRESSOR_EXECUTABLE setting in pelicanconf.py to match whatever method you use to install the actual compressor.
5. That's it! You can now run make devserver from the root directory and navigate to localhost:8000. make rsync_upload will build and publish the site to the remote server.

(Parallel instructions in https://lawler.io/about/)

Useful commands

./generate_entry.py "Post Title Here" to generate a new post, with metadata placeholders inserted

• make rsync_upload to publish the site
• All configuration is in /pelicanconf.py
• /publishconf.py contains overrides of pelicanconf for the make publish command (executed by rsync_upload). Intended for prod values, keys, etc.
• pygmentize -S default -f html -a .highlight > default_code.css For when Pygment/CodeHilite needs a kick in the pants. (Newer versions of Pelican/Pygment/Python Markdown changed how the generated HTML is structured.)

About the website

When computer-programming/engineering types have a website, it's traditional to brag about explain the technology used to create and serve the site. I have no idea who actually reads these summaries, but for posterity's sake…

The website is a static site created by Pelican, a Python static site generator. I added a few custom Python extensions to bend the Jinja2 templating engine to my will.

I created the theme myself—both the desktop and mobile variants. The basis for the theme is Dave Liepmann's Edward Tufte CSS, which powers the lovely serifed font and gorgeous margin notes you see throughout Lawler.io.

Major thanks to Jody Frankowski's Blue Penguin theme (which, itself, was based on pelican-mockingbird) and Claudio Walser's FH5CO marble theme as guides to figure out how to use some of Pelican's less-documented areas for advanced themes.