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title: "DocPad - Streamline your Web Development"
layout: 'default'
DocPad streamlines your web development stack allowing you to write full featured websites in minutes
DocPad is a command line tool (and node.js module if desired) that sits ontop of your applications assets, providing functionality such as meta data extraction, layout support, rendering, and querying. It has a powerful event based and modular infrastructure, making it easy to extend with plugins. You can already use it with existing plugins to compile a vast amount of pre-processors (such as CoffeeSript, HAML, SASS, LESS, etc), as well as concatinate and minify your files.
All in all, DocPad is absolutely ideal for use in the following ways:
- as static site generator like Jeykll and Octopress
- as a build system like Brunch and Grunt
- as an on the fly rendering engine for your node.js application templates and assets
You can even use pre-built Skeletons by other people to bootstrap your next project! But the most important thing to note here, is that DocPad does a fantastic job at all these use cases do to its amazing agnostic and modular infrastructure.
People simply love using DocPad, they think it is the most fun, and most empowering web development experience they've ever had. Here's some highlights:
<%- @partial('tweet-list',{
tweets: """
https://twitter.com/mbrevoort/status/131109168215105537
https://twitter.com/paul_irish/status/134816120925470720
https://twitter.com/slace/status/137151760300130304
https://twitter.com/mattmcmanus/status/142656089224253441
https://twitter.com/fearthecowboy/status/149572663067672576
https://twitter.com/doffm/status/187205725334933504
https://twitter.com/_pwalsh/status/192900090795524096
https://twitter.com/lukekarrys/status/196126189134422016
https://twitter.com/jaminrubio/status/210713140688723969
"""
}) %>
There are plenty of static site generators out there. Jekyll, Octopress and Wintersmith to name a few. However, DocPad is the only one that:
- Lets you mix and match renderers for when you need a little bit of Eco in your CoffeeScript
- Provides a query engine for parsed documents, allowing your templates to generate custom navigation lists, reference other documents, and even perform advanced searches
- Supports dynamic documents that re-render on each request, allowing you to cater for the odd dynamic page such as search or a subscription form
- Lets you extend the server with your own custom routes, so you can setup redirects or even build a full scale web application using docpad as a module
- Or even deploy live with a node.js docpad server, that can pull in live data, regenerate your website every few minutes, and even provide a REST interface for client-side querying and editing of your documents
All of this stuff is accomplished easily with DocPad and readily available to everyone. We have an amazing community of passionaite people, and a superior tech infrastructure allowing truly awesome stuff to happen. There really is no need to use another static site generator anymore.
Here's a live showcase of websites already built with DocPad:
If starting from scratch isn't your thing, you can utilise pre-made skeletons shared by the community to bootstrap your next project. Here's a live list of skeletons currently available to you:
Here's a live list of plugins you can utilise with DocPad:
Installing DocPad for the first time? Here's the steps:
- Install Node.js
- Install DocPad
[sudo] npm install -g docpad@6.0 [sudo] docpad install
- If you want Growl notifications on OSX, you'll need to install the growl command line tool
Upgrading DocPad from an older version to a newer version? Checkout the Upgrade Guide on the Wiki