Power Build

Power Build is a photo album builder which generates a site based on the images in a project. It works from command line.

Demo Site

Requirement

1. Ruby version 2.0 or higher
2. Mac or Linux (Nothing has been tested on Windows.)
3. This tool is for hosting on GitHub pages. Other sites may not be compatible.

Installation

Run:

$gem install power-build

or manually write gem 'power-build' in the Gemfile before you run $bundle.

Commands

In the root of your project, run:

$power init

It creates a config file in your project directory. You can adjust the content depending on how you want to build your site, but don't change the file name.

$power build

You can skip the build and just run power. This command generates a static site which allows you to host on github pages. Basically it creates a index.html and a folder assets with other stuff in it.

$power delete

Clean all files generated by power-build.

Further commands and shortcuts will display at:

$power help

Config

The config file looks like this:

{
  "title": "Your Site Title",

  // Displaying the source on you nav-bar
  "host_link": "https://github.com/nkj20932/power-build",
  "host_display_text": "GitHub",

  // Select the folder you store images
  "root_folder": "storage",

  // Website language: either "zh-tw" or "en"
  "language": "zh-tw"
}

1. Remember to keep the file content in JSON format. Don't break it.
2. Currently there are only two languages for display: English and Traditional Chinese.
3. root_folder for the images should be in your root folder. Otherwise the links and images will not be displayed. Check the folder structure in the next section.

Folder Structure

Before site generation, you need to include at least the folder of your images:

My_project_folder
|-- image_root_folder

If so, your folder will look like this after site generation:

My_project_folder
|-- image_root_folder
|-- power-build.config
|-- assets
|-- index.html

Everything in your project root folder will be ignored. Files already in your assets directory will not be overwritten during build, so any change in custom.js or custom.css will preserve.

Image Arrangement

The image folder should be stored by categories like this:

image_root_folder
|-- category_1
|    |--  image_1.jpg
|    |--  image_2.png
|    |--  image_3.gif
|
|-- category_2
|-- category_3
|-- image_1.jpg
|-- image_2.png

All images will be categorized with their folder name. Images not in a subfolder will be categorized as "Uncategorized". For example:

my_album/
|-- family/
|    |--  brother.jpg
|    |--  mother.png
|    |--  sister.gif
|
|-- my_life/
|-- my_pet/
|-- James Bond.jpg
|-- Samuel Jackson.png

brother.jpg will be labelled as "family", while James Bond.jpg and Samuel Jacson.png will be labelled as "Uncategorized".

Only this structure followed can the site be generated in the correct format as in the demo.

Deployment

After generation, push from the branch gh-pages to Github and enjoy.

GitHub Pages Hosting Instruction

Issues & Contribution

The project follows MIT Licence. Any issue, pull-request, feature-request, or comment is welcomed.