Volt 0.0.3

The static website generator with potential

The Python static website generator with potential

Another static website generator?

Sure, why not :)? The number of static site generators is continuously growing, but so far I have yet to find a flexible static site that suits my needs. So I decided to write my own.

What’s so different about Volt?

Here are some of my favorite features:

1. Automatic pagination

   Say you have a blog with 10 posts, each with its own set of tags that might might not be present in all posts. By only by supplying the URL pattern, Volt can generate the pages containing each blog post categorized by tag, paginated to your liking.

   For example, you only need to supply tag/{tags} and Volt will generate links to the pages tag/foo, tag/bar, tag/baz, where each of these page will contain all the posts sharing that tag.

   And this doesn’t apply only to tags. You can use it to create pages based on authors, time (year, day, date, whatever you want), and any other data you put in your posts.

   All with a simple URL pattern in the configuration file, like so

   PAGINATIONS = ('', 'tag/{tags}', '{time:%Y}', '{time:%Y/%m}', '{time:%Y/%m/%d}')

2. Auto-regenerating built-in server

   Static sites need to be generated repeatedly to reflect changes in their source. After a while, doing this becomes cumbersome and annoying. Volt’s server automatically generates your static site whenever it detects changes in the source and the configuration file, so you can focus on experimenting with your actual site contents.

3. Modularity and extensibility

   Under the hood, Volt is actually a collection of different engines responsible for different sections of your site. The blog engine, for example generates the blog section of your site, while the plain engine, generates simple web pages. See how simple the blog engine code is or take a peek at the main site generator function to get a picture of how the engines work.

   Finally, Volt comes with a plugin architecture that lets you hook into the engines’ actions. Seven plugins comes packed in with volt:

   • Atom feed generator plugin (atomic, no extra dependency)

   • Markup processing plugins:

     • reStructured text (rst_parser, requires docutils)

     • Markdown (markdown_parser, requires python-markdown or python-discount)

     • Textile (textile_parser, requires python-textile)

   • Syntax highlighter plugin (syntax, requires pygments)

   • CSS minifier plugin (css_minifier, requires cssmin)

   • Javascript minifier plugin (js_minifier, requires jsmin)

   Browse their code to see how you can easily write your own plugin.

4. Centrally-managed configuration with flexible options

   Sort your content according to time, or title, or author name, or tags, anything you want. Set global values for all content, e.g. authors for all blog posts. Define your own Jinja2 tests or filters. Set the plugin options. You can do all these in Volt through one central configuration file: voltconf.py, conveniently accessible in your project folder.

All these with the perks of static websites: easy deployment, easy back-up and tracking, security, and speed.

INSTALLATION

Latest version from PyPI (0.0.2): pip install volt

Bleeding edge from main development repo: pip install git+https://github.com/bow/volt.git

Volt is still in alpha and under heavy development. Things will break here and there, but it’s usable enough for creating real websites:

• bow.web.id (source, using the latest development version)

• spaetzblog

Dependency:

• Jinja2

Optional dependencies:

• python-markdown (installed by default for volt demo, can be safely removed if not used)

USAGE

Go through a superquick demo of Volt by running volt demo in an empty directory and opening localhost:8000 in your browser.

Here’s a quick summary of the currently available commands:

• volt init: Starts a Volt project, must be run inside an empty directory. The voltconf.py file created by this command currently contains almost all the default settings. You can safely edit or remove them.

• volt demo: Starts the demo, must be run inside an empty directory.

• volt gen: Generates the website into a site folder in your current project directory.

• volt serve: Generates the website and Starts the server pointing to the site directory.

• volt ext: Adds a template for writing your custom engine, plugin, or widget. Custom engines and plugins are stored respectively inside the engines and plugins directory in the root Volt project directory. Widgets are stored inside widgets.py in the same directory. You can also specify an additional --builtin to copy a builtin engine/plugin/widget to your Volt project directory.

• volt version: Shows the current Volt version.

All of the commands except for init and demo can be run from anywhere inside a Volt project directory.

The docs are, unfortunately, minimum at the moment. For now, the source is the primary documentation.

PLANS

See the TODO list.

ATTRIBUTION

Volt was inspired by Blogofile, which unfortunately has ceased development.