Foresite

An extremely minimal static site generator.

CLI executable that converts markdown wrapped in a single template to static HTML for simple blogs hosted on GitHub Pages or similar.

Installation

The only requirement is Ruby >= 2.7.0.

$ gem install foresite

Quick start: Hello World

$ mkdir my_blog                 # Create a project directory

$ cd my_blog

$ foresite init                 # Initialize

$ foresite touch "Hello World"  # Create markdown post titled "Hello World"

$ foresite build                # Converts markdown to HTML

Screenshot of Hello World post

Getting started guide

1. Create your project directory

Create a project directory for your site and run foresite init from within it:

$ mkdir my_blog

$ cd my_blog

$ foresite init
Created md/
Created post/
Created erb/
Created erb/post.md.erb
Created erb/wrapper.html.erb
Created erb/_list.html.erb
Created erb/feed.xml.erb

Three subdirectories are created, along with three ERB template files.

Some facts:

  • md subdirectory will contain markdown files known as posts, which are your site's content.
  • post subdirectory will contain HTML files generated from the markdown posts with the exception of an index.html file listing all posts, which will exist in the top-level project directory.
  • erb subdirectory contains ERB templates you can modify:
    • post.md.erb is the default markdown file for every post.
    • wrapper.html.erb is a HTML wrapper template for every generated HTML file.
    • _list.html.erb is a HTML template partial for the list of posts on the index.html page.
    • feed.xml.erb is a XML template for an RSS feed.

2. Write your first post

Run foresite touch to generate a new post in the md subdirectory. The title is its sole argument.

$ foresite touch "Welcome to my site"
Created md/2023-01-15-welcome-to-my-site.md

$ cat md/2023-01-15-welcome-to-my-site.md
# Welcome to my site

2023-01-15

A single markdown file is created in the md subdirectory. This file is meant for you to edit.

Some facts:

  • The title is the first line formatted as H1.
  • Current date in YYYY-MM-DD format is the first markdown paragraph.
  • Current date and title are "slugified" for filename.

3. Modify templates as desired

post.md.erb is used to when running foresite touch for the default markdown content. It has two variables, @title for the post title and @date_ymd for the created date in ISO 8601 YYYY-MM-DD format. Modify to have different defaults when running foresite touch.

wrapper.html.erb wraps all of your markdown. It has two variables, @title for the post title that will populate the <title> tag, and @content for a given post's HTML (converted from markdown). For the index.html file, @title will be nil, and @content will be an list of links to all posts in reverse-chronological order. Modify to have different overall page structure, or to add <style> etc.

_list.html.erb is used to generate the <ul> list of posts on the index.html file. Modify to show posts in a different way.

feed.xml.erb is an RSS feed, it will require a title as well as a base_url for where you host your site.

4. Generate HTML from markdown

Run foresite build to create HTML in the post subdirectory and the index.html file:

$ foresite build
Created post/2023-01-15-welcome-to-my-site.html
Created index.html
Created feed.xml

In this example, two HTML files and an XML file are created.

Some facts:

  • For every post markdown file in the md subdirectory an equivalent HTML file is generated in the post subdirectory, each wrapped with wrapper template markup.
  • A single index.html file shows a list of links to all posts in reverse-chronological order, prefixed with post date.
    • Post titles are parsed from the first H1 tag in each post markdown file.
    • Post dates are parsed from the post markdown filename.
  • The feed.xml file reflects the list posts in RSS 2.0 format.
  • Re-running foresite build removes and recreates all HTML files in the post subdirectory as well as the index.html file and feed.xml file.

In this example, the index.html will contain:

<ul>
  <li>2023-01-15 <a href="post/2023-01-15-welcome-to-my-site.html">Welcome to my site</a></li>
</ul>

5. Watch files and build automatically

Run foresite watch to detect changes to markdown or ERB files, build will run automatically. Useful for previewing content locally.

Development

  1. Clone
  2. bundle to install dependencies
  3. bundle exec rake to run tests & linter

To install this gem from local source, run bundle exec rake install:local.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome. The goals of Foresite are:

  • Extremely lightweight
  • Simple to use & understand
  • Minimal features

Read more in the blog post introducing Foresite

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.