A "zero build" documentation platform
ZeroBee is an experiment to create an MkDocs-like system where file processing and site creation happens entirely within the browser. ZeroBee will take markdown documents and create a static, singe-page, site instantly, without any prerequistie build process.
On your web server, from a directory where traffic is served:
- Copy the "scaffolder page" (
dist/index.html) into the directory - Create a sub-directory names
docsfor your markdown documents - Create a config (
zb.json) for the site
See the configuration spec for details on how to setup the site and documents.
Also, the configuration for the sample site (example/zb.json) may be useful.
As web clients continue to get more powerful, compute that was traditionally only possible or performant on the server-side can be shifted to the client. Doing so eliminates the needs that comes with building and maintaining server-side infrastructure.
- Simple to use / "batteries included"
- Everything works out of the box with reasonable defaults (e.g. no custom web server configuration required)
- Maintain a fast and fluid user experience
- Little-to-no repetition to minimize maintence burden from content changes (e.g. titles are pulled from markdown files, not declared in config).
- Conversion from Markdown to HTML is done via markdown-it, with conversion being done in the background with a web worker
- UI components and DOM manipulation is done with plain old Javascript
The build process consists of using rollup.js no create the necessary distribution files, including the dist/index.html file intended for use by most consumers.
npm run buildThe build process will also update the example/index.html file.
You can run a local webserver to see these changes, e.g.:
npx http-server .- Page slugs are hashes, this allows for easy setup without worrying about configuring redirects on the web server