python-webgen

Webgen.py is a Python version of the well known webgen static website generator. It is not a complete rewrite of webgen and some features are missing but there are also a few new nice things. The main reason webgen.py exists is because i did not know ruby and changing things with webgen is a pain so i decided to use my own python generator.

Features

• Quick generation of multilingual (.en.page, .fr.page) static websites.
• Compatibility with webgen site architecture (.page format).
• Clean and easy site architecture (one .page file == one html file)
• More readable configuration file (no more yaml).
• Jinja2 templates for generation (selectable per page, templating in page).
• Provides a coarse blog post handler (posts can be printed through template loops, no tags yet)
• All properties set in the .page header can be used in the template
• Modular plugin system
• Easy python plugin in subfolder (no system installation needed)

Plugins:

• Links list configurable in the config file.
• Language menu.
• Website sitemap.xml automatically generated.
• Automatic reference page generation from bibtex file.
• Print list from csv file.
• Zorglangue page generation (from french).

Markdown plugins:

• Can be used (when listed in config file) from subfolder mdextensions.
• Can use latex formulas with 'latex' extension but requires latex and dvipng

Less desirable features:

• Only Markdown markup langage for now (should be easy to change anyway).
• Does not work out of the box on a webgen site (config file and template have to be adapted)
• No hierachical menu, all pages in menu have the same level
• Not extremely tested.

Installation

Required python modules

The file webgen.py is self content but some python modules are required:

• argparse (>=0.1)
• configobj (>=4.7)
• jinja2 (>= 2.6)
• markdown (>= 2.1)

Those can be easily installed on debian-based linux with:

apt-get install python-argparse python-configobj python-jinja2 python-markdown 

Testing

The github repository contains a example website with:

• website.cfg a demo config file
• templates folder containing templates for the demo website
• src source architecture and content for the website

Execute pywebgen in the folder for generating the website in the out folder:

$ .././pywebgen

Documentation

Right now documentation is nearly non-existent but the website architecture is the same as for webgen. And the python code is not so long yet.