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 nothing to break.
Secure: No database to break into. Fewer moving parts gives hackers fewer entry points.
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 <markdown file(s)>

Options

-b --blog             Blog index template path.
-c --config           Configuration file path.
-h --help             Show help.
-r --rss              Blog RSS template path.
-t --template         Page template file path.
-v --version          Show version number.

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 index 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 index 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.

Configuration file

A JSON or YAML configuration file is optional:

Name	Usage
BUILD_DIR	Directory to store built HTML files. Default: ‘build’.
DISPLAY_DATE_FORMAT	HTML date format. Default: ‘%d %b %Y’.
SOURCE_DATE_FORMAT	Markdown date format. Default: ‘%Y-%m-%d %H:%M %z’.
RSS_ARTICLE_COUNT	Number of blog articles in the RSS feed. Default: 50.
RSS_DATE_FORMAT	RSS feed date format (must conform to RFC 822). Default: ‘%a %d %b %Y %H:%M %Z’.

Contact me

Send bug reports and patches to craig@seagrape.us.