Pony Express

+-------------+      +----------------+      +-------------+
|             |      |                |      |             |
|   Dropbox   | +--> |  Pony Express  | +--> |     S3      |
|             |      |                |      |             |
+-------------+      +------|\----/|--+      +-------------+
|             |      |   ___| \,,/_/  |      |             |
| * Templates |      | +-__/       \  |      | * HTML      |
| * Styles    |      |_ +-/     .   \ |      | * CSS       |
| * Scripts   |      |  -/   (_      \|      | * Scripts   |
| * Markdown  |      |  /      \_ / ==\      |             |
|             |      | /       / \_ O o)     |             |
+-------------+      +-------------\==/`     +-------------+

A teeny server for building & deploying static websites backed by dropbox. Your website is immediately updated when you save a file.

• Easily edit your page by updating copy in markdown files in your dropbox.
  • Use a convenient editor like Ulysses with markdown and dropbox support for editing on desktop or iPad.
  • Or use something like the Byword iPhone app when you're on the go.
• New pages are as easy as creating a new file. Your site's url scheme mimics the dropbox directory structure.
• Cheap to host. You're just serving up static files on S3.
• Fast response times. It's a static site so use the AWS CDN for supreme speeds.
• Baked-in blog infrastructure.

Live Examples

• wgm.cool
• joeshaner.com
• fallcreekfarm.org
• ramblinrunner.com
• cragcation.com
• brandonkreitler.com

Running

$ node app.js

# In production
#
$ curl -XPOST localhost:8080/deploy

# Testing
#
$ curl -XPOST localhost:3000/deploy/sync -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{"id": 544017}'

Developing

With your /src folder already populated, you can run either of the two to push to S3 or service locally. Here [dropbox-id] is also the source folder under /src, i.e. /src/[dropbox-id]

$ node build [dropbox-id] push
$ node build [dropbox-id] dev

Registering

Run the application and visit /authorize to get dropbox keys properly installed.

In Depth

• Dropbox hits Pony Express up any time there's a change to the app folder.
• Pony Express fetches the files that have changed and rebuilds the website
• Pony Express notices which build files have been changed, added, or deleted and pushes those changes to S3.
• S3 serves up the public-facing website.

Releasing

• npm test
• npm run lint
• git tag x.y.z
• git push --tags
• eb deploy -l x.y.z

Contributing

• Fork
• Edit
• Write test
• Run tests npm test
• PR