thera 3.0

Static Website Builder

Thera

A Python script for building static HTML websites from Markdown text files, using the Mako template engine. Excellent support for blogs: allows YAML metadata in the blog markdown files, can create an Atom-compatible RSS feed.

Why use it?

• Simple: Requires one file to generate the site.
• Reliable: A static website of HTML files has almost nothing to break. Immune to the Slashdot effect.
• Secure: No database to break into. Fewer moving parts gives hackers fewer entry points into your website.
• Fast: Static pages are pre-compiled HTML, ready for display.

Minimalist design reduces maintenance headaches.

How to install it

pip3 install thera

How to use it

thera.py <markdown file(s)>

Options

-h --help             Show help.
-b --blog             Build blog files.
-c --config           Configuration file path.
-C --clean            Delete distribution directory.
-s --static           Static directories paths (javascript, css).
-t --template         Page template file path.

YAML

YAML can be used in the markdown files:

---
Title: Hello world
Date: 09 Apr 2018 07:00 AM -0400
Slug: hello
Summary: A new blog for tech, business, and other oddments.
---
Hello. This is a new blog with a focus on tech and business.

Note: To generate an RSS feed the YAML date must include the offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). In the example above, the offset is -0400.

Template tags

Blog RSS XML page

• ${articles}: A list of page data dictionaries (explained below).
• ${now}: The current date/time in UTC.

Blog archive page: a list of articles

• ${data}: A dictionary where the key is a year and the value is a list of page data dictionaries (explained below) of articles for that year.

All other pages

• ${data}: The page data dictionary with the following keys:
  • content: The markdown page converted to HTML without the template applied.
  • display-date: Allows the web pages to use a different date format than the YAML date.
  • slug: The part of an URL identifying the page in human-friendly words. For example in https://seagrape.us/blog/space-race.html, space-race is the slug. If a slug isn't in the YAML metadata, Thera uses the markdown file name.
  • summary: The summary of an article. Can be used in the RSS feed or the blog archive page.
  • title: The web page title. If a title isn't in the YAML metadata, Thera uses the <h1> header.
  • utc-date: The UTC version of the YAML date. Used in the RSS feed.

How to get it

• Project page
• Release history

License

MIT License.

Contact me

Bug reports and patches can be sent to [e-mail].