Render

Render is a lightweight Node.js application designed to serve and display Markdown files with a clean, GitHub-inspired aesthetic. It features a dynamic dashboard and full-text search capabilities.

Features

• Markdown Rendering: High-fidelity conversion of Markdown to HTML using marked.
• Syntax Highlighting: Beautiful code blocks powered by highlight.js.
• Front-Matter Support: Extract and use metadata (like titles and dates) from your Markdown files using gray-matter.
• GitHub-Style UI: Professional look and feel using github-markdown-css.
• Dynamic Dashboard: Automatically lists all pages available in the content directory.
• Server-Side Search: Quickly find pages by searching through titles, slugs, and content.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v14 or higher recommended)
• npm

Installation

1. Clone the repository or download the source code.
2. Install the dependencies:

npm install

Usage

1. Add Content: Place your .md files in the pages/ directory.
2. Run the App: Start the server using Node:

node app.js

3. View: Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:9901.

Content Example

To take full advantage of Render's features, you can include YAML front-matter at the top of your Markdown files:

---
title: My Project Update
date: 2026-01-20
---

# Introduction

This is an example of a rendered page.

Data Management

Render includes built-in scripts to help you backup and restore your Markdown content.

Backup

To create a backup of your pages/ directory:

npm run backup

This will:

1. Prompt you for an optional note.
2. Create a timestamped ZIP file in the backups/ directory (e.g., backup_YYYY-MM-DDTHH-mm-ss_note.zip).

Restore

To restore your content from a previous backup:

npm run restore

This will:

1. List available backups from the backups/ directory.
2. Ask if you want to create a safety backup of your current content.
3. Overwrite the pages/ directory with the contents of the selected backup.

Project Structure

• app.js: The main Express server logic and rendering engine.
• pages/: The directory where your Markdown files are stored.
• package.json: Project dependencies and configuration.
• Dockerfile & docker-compose.yml: For containerized deployment.