Gorky

Gorky is a lightweight, markdown-powered static site generator designed for creating beautiful blogs and personal websites that can be easily deployed to GitHub Pages.

Gorky is named after Maxim Gorky

The layout and design is inspired from garry.net

Installation

npm install -g gorky

Or install locally in your project:

npm install --save-dev gorky

Quick Start

1. Initialize a new site

gorky init my-site
cd my-site

This creates a new Gorky site with example content and template files.

2. Customize your site

• Edit site-config.js to configure site settings and navigation
• Add your markdown files to content/
• Create blog posts in content/posts/

3. Build your site

gorky build

Or use npm:

npm run build

4. Deploy to GitHub Pages

1. Push your code to GitHub
2. Go to Settings → Pages
3. Select the branch with index.html
4. Your site is live!

Why Gorky?

Gorky makes it incredibly simple to create and maintain a static website using markdown files. No complex build tools, no database setup, just write your content in markdown and Gorky handles the rest.

Markdown-First Approach

All your content lives in markdown files. Whether it's blog posts, documentation, or custom pages, you write everything in familiar markdown syntax. Gorky automatically:

• Converts markdown to beautiful HTML
• Generates navigation from your sidebar configuration
• Creates a posts listing page
• Handles tags and filtering
• Provides syntax highlighting for code blocks

Flexible Content Management

• Blog Posts: Create posts in the content/posts/ folder with YAML frontmatter for metadata
• Custom Pages: Add any markdown file and link to it from your sidebar
• Dynamic Navigation: Configure your sidebar through site-config.js
• Tag System: Organize posts with tags and filter by them
• Analytics Ready: Built-in support for GoatCounter analytics

Features

• ✅ Responsive Design: Works beautifully on desktop, tablet, and mobile
• ✅ Syntax Highlighting: Code blocks automatically highlighted with Prism.js
• ✅ Tag Filtering: Filter posts by tags with a simple URL parameter
• ✅ Client-Side Routing: Fast navigation without page reloads
• ✅ SEO Friendly: Meta tags and canonical URLs included
• ✅ Analytics Ready: Built-in support for GoatCounter
• ✅ Easy Theming: All theme properties in one styles/theme.css file
• ✅ Lightweight: Minimal dependencies, fast load times

CLI Commands

• gorky init [project-name] - Initialize a new Gorky site
• gorky build - Build the static site

Configuration

Site Configuration

Edit site-config.js to customize site-wide settings, sidebar navigation, and analytics:

module.exports = {
  // Basic site settings
  baseUrl: 'https://yourusername.github.io/your-repo',
  siteName: 'My Site',
  authorName: 'Your Name',
  defaultDescription: 'Your site description...',
  defaultKeywords: 'keyword1, keyword2',
  favicon: 'favicon.ico',
  appleTouchIcon: 'apple-touch-icon.png',
  
  // GoatCounter Analytics (optional)
  goatCounterEnabled: false,
  goatCounterCode: 'yourcode',
  allowLocal: false,
  allowFrame: false,
  noOnload: false,
  
  // Sidebar Configuration
  sidebar: {
    header: 'My Site',
    homeDisplayName: '🏠 Home',
    postsDisplayName: '✍️ Posts',
    footer: [
      {
        text: '2025 © Your Name',
        target: 'https://yoursite.com'
      }
    ],
    sections: {
      'Links': {
        'GitHub': {
          target: 'https://github.com/yourusername',
          openInNewTab: true
        }
      }
    }
  }
};

The sidebar configuration includes:

• header: Text displayed at the top of the sidebar
• homeDisplayName / postsDisplayName: Display names for main navigation items
• footer: Array of footer items (text or links)
• sections: Navigation sections with items (target can be ?page=filename for internal pages or full URLs for external links)

Build Configuration

Create a gorky.config.js file to customize paths (optional):

module.exports = {
  contentDir: 'content',
  outputFile: 'index.html',
  templateFile: 'index-template.html',
  stylesDir: 'styles'
};

License

MIT