Need Content System

Sections:

• About
• Dependencies
• License, Creator, and Contact Information
• Installation
• Basic Usage
• Configuring your Website
• Creating Content

About

Need Content System is a lightweight and easy to use content management system for quickly compiling markdown into a static, easy-to-use, easy-to-view, and browsable web app.
Need Content System, or NCS or Need for short, can be used for research articles, blogs, short stories, design documents, or anything else.
More information is available at https://need.cab

Dependencies

Required:

1. Python 3.10.9 and above
2. Markdown - https://pypi.org/project/Markdown/

License, Creator, and Contact Information

• Aaron Steinberg
  • aaron@aa.codes
• MIT License
  • Full License Text available in LICENSE

Installation

Instructions Coming Soon

Basic Usage

1. Navigate to a directory you wish to create a Need project directory

2. Create the project
   need create [project_name] [author_name]

3. Navigate to the directory
   cd [project_name]

   • Within this directory, you will find the following files:

     Editable Files:

     • NEED.md - A copy of this file
     • config.yaml - Configuration File
     • sources/ - Directory containing user-made source files used to generate website

     Non Editable Files:

     • LICENSE - MIT License
     • style.css - Generated Style Sheet
     • index.html - This is the generated landing page of the website. Layout, design, and functionality can be edited from config.yaml
     • n/ 0 Each file in this directory is a generated page

4. While in the project directory, generate the site by running the following command:
   need gen
   This command will potentially change the following files:

   • index.html
     • This file will be overwritten with a newly generated landing page
   • n/
     • This directory will contain one generated html page for each user-created file in sources/

Configuring your website

The default config.yaml looks like this:

# Required Settings:

title: My Need Content System Project
author: John Smith
url: localhost
global-font-size: 1rem
source-directory-name: source
generated-directory-name: n

# Optional Settings: (any omitted boolean settings will be assumed false)

enable-about-page: true
enable-nav-bar: true

show-title-banner: true

# custom-css-file-name: [filename]
# custom-script-file-name: [filename]

Changing the configuration file can alter the look and feel of your project.
Style, organization, and more can be customized to fit your needs from this file.

Additional properties you can add:

non-working-property-one: test_value

Creating Content

1. Navigate to the project directory
2. Navigate to the sources directory
3. From here, you can create one of two types of content:
   • page
   • post
4. To create a contact page, run the command:
   need new page contact
   • This will create a new file named contact.page.nd
   • Note the extension is nd not 'md'. This is not a typo. Need pages and posts follow a specific, custom format known as Need, which is shortened to .nd
   • Make sure you run the command from the sources directory
5. Open contact.page.nd and you will see the following:

{{
need: {
	content_type: 'page',
	title: 'Contact',
	example-constant: 'example',
	text-align: 'left',
	enable: true,
	inherit-global-constants: true,
}
}}
# {{title}}
Welcome to the {{title}} page. You can use markdown syntax freely.
## Local Constants:
You can use defined constants such as {{example_constant}}. Is this page enabled?  
{{enable ? 'yes it is' : 'no it is not'}}.
## Global Constants:
You can access global constants defined in the config file. For example, the title of the website is {{global.title}}. The author of the website is {{global.author}}

6. We can refactor this to make it look more like a contact page, as shown below

{{
need: {
content_type: 'page',
title: 'Contact',
full-name: 'Bobby Robert',
phone-number: '310-555-5555',
image-path: '../assets/headshot.jpg',
text-align: 'center',
enable: true,
inherit-global-constants: true,
}
}}
# Contact Information
![headshot]({{image-path}})
* Name: {{full-name}}
* Phone:  {{phone-number}}