Beautifully Simple Static Bottle Blog Generator

Features

• Can run dynamically serving files via WSCGI or generate a static site from the files
• No database required
• Uses Waitress WSCGI Server: it is pure-Python, standard library only, cross-platform, deployment-oriented, production-quality.
• Generated HTML, JS and CSS is optionally minified and saved
• Supports in-line concatenation and embedding of javascript and CSS files.
• Caching, minification and static files can be disabled if needed
• JS files in /www/js/ optionally minified to /blog/js/
• CSS files in /www/css/ optionally minified to /blog/css/
• Generates static from markdown files in content and docs folders under www/blog/ by default
• Mobile-first, responsive design
• RSS feed generated at www/blog/rss.xml and referenced in robots.txt to generate sitemap for blogs.
• Python3-compatible - using Python Future and 2to3

Easy Setup

• pip install -r requirements.txt
• Copy config file: cp config.py.example config.py - this is done automatically the first time app.py is run if the config.py file does not exist
• Edit config.py as needed

Running

• python app.py
• Browse the website at http://localhost:8080

All the .html files are generated at startup in the www/blog and www/blog/docs folders.
The files in www can then be synchronised with your website using a tool like rsync

Why?

Because there aren't enough static website generators already in existence that look beautiful.

This is one I created for my personal blog to learn how to build a Python website from scratch. It's a bit of a hack but it does the job perfectly for my needs. For simplicity and ease-of-learning, and following the single-file Bottle design, all of the main web code lives in one file, app.py

Check the TODO.md or ROADMAP.md to see what's left to do and if you make some CHANGES.md I'll be sure to add you to the CREDITS.md and humans.txt files.

Example Blog Post

Put markdown files in the folder content/ ensuring that your markdown files use a content header:

e.g. content/2015-12-25-xmas.md - be sure to use the meta information header on each file as shown below

---
date: 2015-04-01 12:56
title: Emil Cioran Quote
tags: [emil cioran, cioran, philosophy, quotes]
---
"I have all the defects of other people, and yet everything they do seems to me inconceivable."
Emil Cioran

Theming and Customisation

• Change the views .tpl files as needed for your website
• Docs for 'Meta' information on the right column are generated from the files in docs/ folder.
• Error 404 File Not Found page: www/error/404.html - see www/.htaccess file for how to use with apache.
• Edit the css in www/css/
• Edit the javascript in www/js/
• Put images in www/img/
• Favourite icons: www/favicon.ico and www/img/favicon.png
• Don't forget to update www/humans.txt!

config.py explained

Config.data is a dict() of the following configuration values:

    'debug': False,                   # debug mode
    'generate': True,                 # generate static website files
    'minify_css': True,               # minify css served by webserver (not static files)
    'minify_js': True,                # minify javascript served by webserver (not static files)
    'minify_html': True,              # minify all output html including static files
    'cache': True,                    # cache files and output of app
    'cache_dir': 'tmp/cache',         # default location of cached files
    'content_dir': 'content',         # default location of .md blog content files
    'docs_dir': 'docs',               # default location for non-blog .md files
    'www_root': 'www',                # default location of website root directory
    'output_dir': 'www/blog',         # default location of webroot for blog
    'js_dir': 'www/js',               # default location of javascript files
    'js_output': 'www/blog/js',       # minified js output directory
    'js_inline': []                   # inline js to compile into page (default:footer) <script>
    'css_dir': 'www/css',             # default location of css files
    'css_output': 'www/blog/css',     # minified js output directory
    'css_inline': ["normalize.css", "skeleton.css"] # inline css to compile into page  (default:header) <style>
    'ga_code': 'UA-00000000-1',       # google analytics code UA-XXXX-Y
    'title': 'Blog',                  # name of the blog
    'author': 'Anonymous',            # author of the blog
    'email': 'anonymous@example.com', # email of author
    'url': 'http://www.example.com'   # canonical website url

Command Line Interface

• The file manage.py is implemented using click (TO BE DONE!)

> python manage.py --help

Usage: manage.py [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  generate
  serve

Documentation

• Everything's in the docs/ folder.

# IMPORTANT

I decided to use the excellent grav for my blog now, so I wrote a script to migrate markdown files from this project to work with grav, run the tograv.php file to convert files from here.