Zapilates

The official website of Marcelle Volckaert — Pilates instructor, remedial-work specialist, and researcher of Pilates for singers and musicians.

About

Static Hugo site covering:

• The Method — what Pilates is, and the principles behind it
• Classes — Private, Group, Barre, and Remedial
• Specialisms — For singers, for dancers, workshops for musicians
• Research — Marcelle's MMus (cum laude, Stellenbosch) thesis on Pilates warm-up for classical singers
• Journal — notes on movement, breath and stress

The repository is also a Nix flake that produces:

• a reproducible build of the site as a package (packages.<system>.zapilates)
• a NixOS module (nixosModules.default) that serves it via nginx with optional ACME/Let's Encrypt

so a NixOS host can consume this flake as an input and deploy the site with a few lines of configuration.

Design

• Theme — zapilates-studio, an editorial pilates aesthetic inspired by STOTT / Merrithew, Balanced Body, and boutique studio brands
• Palette — Bone paper (#f4efe6), Ink (#1a1a1c), warm Rust accent (#b1583a), muted Sage
• Typography — Fraunces (variable serif, opsz + SOFT axes) for display, Inter for body, IBM Plex Mono for metadata
• Motion — Sticky-header shadow, principles marquee, image ken-burns on hero, reveal-on-scroll fades

Development

Prerequisites

Nix with flakes enabled (experimental-features = nix-command flakes).

# Enter the development shell (Hugo, dart-sass, node, linters, etc.)
nix develop

# Live-reload Hugo dev server
hugo server -D

# One-off production build (writes to ./public)
hugo --minify

Building the site as a Nix package

# Build — outputs ./result/ symlink to the built static site
nix build

# or, explicitly
nix build .#zapilates

# Serve the built package locally on :8000
nix run .#serve

The resulting store path contains the entire minified site (HTML, CSS, JS, images) and is what the NixOS module serves.

Deploying on a NixOS server

The flake exposes a NixOS module at nixosModules.default (aliased as nixosModules.zapilates) that:

• adds the site's Nix store path as an nginx document root
• configures the vhost with sensible cache headers and pretty-URL fallbacks
• (optionally) obtains a Let's Encrypt certificate via ACME
• (optionally) opens ports 80 and 443 on the host firewall

1. Add this flake as an input

In your server's flake.nix:

{
  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-25.05";

    zapilates = {
      url = "github:timlinux/zapilates";
      inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
    };
  };

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, zapilates, ... }: {
    nixosConfigurations.my-server = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
      system = "x86_64-linux";
      modules = [
        ./configuration.nix
        zapilates.nixosModules.default
      ];
    };
  };
}

2. Enable the service on the host

In configuration.nix (or a dedicated module):

{ config, ... }:
{
  # Let's Encrypt (required only if enableACME = true)
  security.acme = {
    acceptTerms = true;
    defaults.email = "you@example.com";
  };

  services.zapilates = {
    enable = true;
    domain = "zapilates.com";
    serverAliases = [ "www.zapilates.com" ];
    enableACME = true;
    forceSSL = true;
    openFirewall = true;
  };
}

Then rebuild:

sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#my-server

3. Updating the site on the server

# On the server (or wherever you build your NixOS config)
nix flake update zapilates
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#my-server

Because the site is a Nix package, activation is atomic — the new site is built to a fresh store path and nginx is reloaded to point at it. Rolling back is a nixos-rebuild switch --rollback away.

Module options

All options live under services.zapilates:

Option	Type	Default	Description
enable	bool	false	Enable the site.
package	package	zapilates from this flake	Override the built site (e.g. to pin a specific revision).
domain	str	"zapilates.com"	Primary vhost domain.
serverAliases	list of str	[ "www.zapilates.com" ]	Additional server names.
enableACME	bool	true	Request a Let's Encrypt certificate.
forceSSL	bool	true	Redirect HTTP → HTTPS (only takes effect when ACME is on).
openFirewall	bool	true	Open ports 80 and 443.
extraNginxConfig	lines	""	Extra nginx config injected into the vhost block.

Project structure

.
├── content/                      # Markdown content (flat top-level URLs)
│   ├── _index.md                 # Home
│   ├── about.md                  # About Marcelle
│   ├── about-pilates.md          # The Method
│   ├── bio.md                    # Movement specialist bio
│   ├── studio.md                 # Studio + gallery
│   ├── classes.md                # Classes landing
│   ├── private.md / group.md     # Class formats
│   ├── barre.md / remedial.md    # Class formats
│   ├── for-singers.md            # Specialism
│   ├── for-dancers.md            # Specialism
│   ├── thesis.md                 # MMus research
│   ├── contact.md                # Contact
│   ├── workshops/                # Section — workshops archive
│   └── blog/                     # Section — journal
├── themes/zapilates-studio/      # Custom Hugo theme
├── static/                       # Images
├── nix/
│   ├── site.nix                  # Package definition (Hugo derivation)
│   └── module.nix                # NixOS module (services.zapilates)
├── flake.nix                     # Flake outputs: packages, module, devShell, apps
├── SPECIFICATION.md              # Software Requirements Specification
├── PACKAGES.md                   # Package inventory
└── PROMPT.log                    # Prompt log

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