Static Website Skeleton

This is a skeleton for static websites.

There are four main components:

• the gen.rb file, which handles compilation
• the Guardfile, which watches files for changes and re-compiles.
• an extremely simple static server, webrick.rb
• a push_dist_to_gh_pages script which will deploy the generated site

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About gen.rb (compilation step)

• gen.rb is set up to convert coffee, sass, and slim files into their respective js, css, and html.
• gen.rb looks for source files anywhere in the tree except for dist/
• all slim files are compiled into dist/<NAME>.html files
• all sass files are compiled into dist/styles/<NAME>.css files. Source files with a .css extension are also moved here.
• all coffee files are compiled into dist/scripts/<NAME>.js files. Source files with a .js extension are also moved here.

There is custom implementation for template partials. In a slim template, the render method can be used which takes one argument: a filename of another slim file. Here's an example:

doctype html
html lang='en'
  head
  body
    == render "_my_partial.slim"

Note that the partial must begin with an underscore, and files shouldn't begin with underscores unless they're partials.

not every slim file is compiled to a corresponding html file. The render is run before the slim=>html conversion, and concatenates the slim files.

Its also possible to make custom helpers. Just add instance methods to the helpers.rb file

Script files should be referenced from slim like script src='./scripts/my_script.js'

Style files should be referenced from slim like link rel='stylesheet' href='./styles/my_style.css'

It's possible to run the compilation step with ruby gen.rb, though this is done automatically when using guard

Webrick (static server)

The ruby webrick.rb command will cd into dist/ and then run a static webrick server on port 8000.

guard will run this command automatically

Guard (trigger builds and live-reload browser)

The app can be started with guard. This will read instructions from the Guardfile.

Whenever guard is run, an initial compilation is run and the server starts.

When the Gemfile changes, the server stops, bundle is automatically run, and the server starts up again

When a file in the dist/ folder changes, the browser will live-reload (make sure to install the livereload chrome extension to use this feature).

When any other source file changes, the compilation step will be triggered.

Deploying to gh-pages

1. Clone this repo, customize it however, and generate a site into dist/
2. Run push_dist_to_gh_pages, which will push the dist/ folder to the gh-pages branch on github.
3. Visit the static site at http://<my_github_username>.github.io/<my_repo_name>