trellis-cms 0.2.2.dev0

A digital garden CMS built with Flask

Trellis

A Flask-based digital garden and hierarchical content management system.

Overview

Trellis is a flexible CMS for building digital gardens with hierarchical content organization. It supports both traditional flat markdown files and nested .page directories, allowing you to organize complex projects with multiple pages while keeping related assets together.

Features

• 📁 Hierarchical Content Structure - Organize content in nested .page directories with unlimited depth
• 📝 Markdown-Based - Write content in markdown with YAML frontmatter
• 🔍 Full-Text Search - Powered by Whoosh with error-tolerant query parsing
• 🔗 Include System - Reference other files using {{include: filename}} syntax
• 🖼️ Page-Specific Assets - Store images and files alongside your content
• 🔐 User Authentication - Role-based access control (admin/editor)
• ✏️ Built-in Editor - Web-based interface for editing content
• 🌿 Git Integration - Automatic commits for content changes
• 🎨 Digital Gardens - Content organized into themed "gardens"
• 🔄 Backwards Compatible - Works with both flat .md files and .page directories

Quick Start

See QUICKSTART.md for detailed instructions on creating a new site.

TL;DR:

# Install Trellis
git clone https://github.com/almargolis/trellis.git
pip install -e ./trellis

# Set up your site (see QUICKSTART.md for details)
trellis-init-db
trellis-search --rebuild  # Initialize search index
python run.py

Content Structure

Traditional Flat Files

content/
  garden-name/
    article.md
    another-article.md

Hierarchical Pages

content/
  projects/
    my-project.page/
      page.md              # Main content
      screenshot.png       # Page asset
      code.py              # Include file
      setup.page/          # Nested sub-page
        page.md

URL mapping:

• content/projects/article.md → /garden/projects/article
• content/projects/project.page/page.md → /garden/projects/project
• content/projects/project.page/setup.page/page.md → /garden/projects/project/setup

Documentation

• CLAUDE.md - Developer guide and architecture overview
• HIERARCHICAL_CONTENT.md - Detailed guide to hierarchical content structure
• DEPLOYMENT.md - Production deployment instructions

Project Name

Trellis - A trellis is a garden structure that supports growth, perfectly representing this system's hierarchical framework for organizing and growing your digital content.

Technology Stack

• Flask - Web framework
• SQLAlchemy - Database ORM
• Markdown - Content format with Python-Markdown extensions
• Whoosh - Full-text search engine
• GitPython - Git integration
• Flask-Login - Authentication

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.