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Zas

Most. Zen. Static. Website. Generator. Ever.

Why another one? C'mon, you must be kidding...

I just wanted to set up a very simple website (just a few pages) with Jekyll and it didn't feel right. I didn't want a blog.

I checked other projects but they were incomplete, cumbersome or solved the wrong problem (blogs, blogs everywhere). I wanted a zen-like experience. Just a layout and some Markdown files as pages with unobstrusive structure and configuration.

Yes, it is another NIH but... I think Zas is a different kind of beast. I admit that I probably overlooked some projects.

Where is the difference?

  1. Gophers. Yes, there is Hugo (kudos!) but... Who wants to learn another directory layout? There is also Hastie too. If you want a blog.
  2. Markdown only. And HTML, if you want.
  3. Just a loop. Zas just loops over all .md and .html files in current directory (and subdirectories), ignoring all any other file (including dot-files).
  4. Your imagination as limit. Zas has a simple extension mechanism based in subcommands. Do you really need to handle a blog with Zas? Install/create a new extension and do it!
  5. Unobstrutive structure, no '_' files. More in Usage section.

Usage

Install:

$ go get github.com/imdario/zas

Go to your site's directory and do:

$ zas init

A .zas directory will be created with sane defaults. Put your layout in .zas/layout.html and you are ready.

$ zas

Yes. Enough. Your delightful site is on .zas/deploy. Enjoy.

What is happening here? Well, "generate" subcommand is called by default. This subcommand accepts the following flags:

  • -verbose: print ALL the things!
  • -full: generates all the input files. By default, zas has an incremental mode which keeps source and deploy directories in sync.

More at Zas repository.