Generated Site

cr4te writes a static HTML site to the output folder.

Output Files

The generated site includes:

site/
|-- index.html
|-- projects.html
|-- tags.html
|-- html/
|-- assets/
|-- thumbnails/
|-- symlinks/

Overview Pages

index.html is the creator overview page.

It includes:

• Creator portrait image cards when portrait visibility is all, otherwise creator text cards with project and media counts on separate lines
• Search
• Media and project counts
• Links to creator pages
• Theme selector

projects.html is the project overview page.

It includes:

• Project cards
• Creator names as secondary card text
• Search
• Media count badges
• Links to project pages

Tags Page

tags.html groups tags and tag-like facet values into clickable filters. Tag-page links open the creator overview with a query filter applied. Clickable project metadata links open the project overview.

Detail Pages

Generated creator and project pages live under html/.

The exact file paths are hashed and nested for stability and collision resistance, rather than being simple slug paths.

Creator pages can show:

• Portrait
• Metadata
• README description
• Tags
• A combined projects section with solo and collaboration project cards
• Collaboration context as secondary text on collaboration project cards
• Creator-level media

Project pages can show:

• Cover/preview image
• Metadata and facets
• README description
• Tags
• Creator or collaboration profile block
• Participants for collaborations
• Project media

Creator and project page titles are exposed in the global breadcrumb area rather than as separate visible title strips. The accessible page title remains present for assistive technology.

Static Assets

assets/ contains generated site CSS, JavaScript, default thumbnails, and the favicon. Built-in and selected custom themes are copied to assets/css/themes/.

See Custom Themes for custom theme authoring and build behavior.

Thumbnails

thumbnails/ contains generated thumbnails for selected portrait views, covers, overview cards, and gallery images. Disabled portrait visibility creates no portrait thumbnails. Details visibility creates source-derived portrait thumbnails only for discovered portraits and prepares a detail portrait default for recoverable failures.

When rebuilding, cr4te keeps the thumbnail folder by default if the output directory already exists. Source-derived thumbnails are reused when their cached freshness metadata still matches the source file path, byte size, modified time, and thumbnail recipe. Use --clear-thumbnail-cache to regenerate thumbnails from scratch when you do not trust preserved source timestamps or want to discard the thumbnail cache.

Staged Media Links

symlinks/ contains staged links to original media files. cr4te uses stable hashed paths so generated pages can refer to media without exposing or depending on the original folder names.

See Media and Galleries for media staging details.

Browser Behavior

The generated site has no backend. Browser JavaScript powers:

• Search
• Pagination
• Theme switching
• Lightbox
• Captions toggle
• Audio player
• Video player
• Responsive layout adjustments

Theme and media volume/mute state use browser localStorage.