Manual ====== Quickstart ---------- Install blag from PyPI_ .. code-block:: sh $ pip install blag .. _pypi: https://pypi.org/project/blag/ Run blag's quickstart command to create the configuration needed .. code-block:: sh $ blag quickstart Create some content .. code-block:: sh $ mkdir content $ edit content/hello-world.md Generate the website .. code-block:: sh $ blag build By default, blag will search for content in ``content`` and the output will be generated in ``build``. All markdown files in ``content`` will be converted to html, all other files (i.e. static files) will be copied over). If you want more separation between the static files and the markdown content, you can put all static files into the ``static`` directory. Blag will copy them over to the ``build`` directory. If you want to customize the looks of the generated site, create a ``template`` directory and put your jinja2 templates here. Those directories can be changed via command line arguments. See .. code-block:: sh $ blag --help Manual ------ Pages and Articles ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Internally, blag differentiates between **pages** and **articles**. Intuitively, pages are simple pages and articles are blog posts. The decision whether a document is a page or an article is made depending on the presence of the ``date`` metadata element: Any document that contains the ``date`` metadata element is an article, everything else a page. This differentiation has consequences: * blag uses different templates: ``page.html`` and ``article.html`` * only articles are collected in the Atom feed * only articles are aggregated in the tag pages blag does **not** enforce a certain directory structure for pages and articles. You can mix and match them freely or structure them in different directories. blag will mirror the structure found in the ``content`` directory :: content/ article1.md article2.md page1.md results in: :: build/ article1.html article2.html page1.html Arbitrary complex structures are possible too: :: content/ posts/ 2020/ 2020-01-01-foo.md 2020-02-01-foo.md pages/ foo.md bar.md results in: :: build/ posts/ 2020/ 2020-01-01-foo.html 2020-02-01-foo.html pages/ foo.html bar.html Static Files ^^^^^^^^^^^^ Static files can be put into the ``content`` directory and will be copied over to the ``build`` directory as well. If you want better separation between content and static files, you can create a ``static`` directory and put the files there. All files and directories found in the ``static`` directory will be copied over to ``build``. :: content/ foo.md bar.md kitty.jpg results in: :: build/ foo.html bar.html kitty.jpg Alternatively: :: content/ foo.md bar.md static/ kitty.jpg results in: :: build/ foo.html bar.html kitty.jpg Internal Links -------------- In contrast to most other static blog generators, blag will automatically convert **relative** markdown links. That means you can link you content using relative markdown links and blag will convert them to html automatically. The advantage is that your content tree in markdown is consistent and self-contained even if you don't generate html from it. .. code-block:: markdown [...] this is a [link](foo.md) to an internal page foo. becomes .. code-block:: html

this is a link to an internal page foo.

Templating ---------- Custom templates are **optional** and stored by default in the ``templates`` directory. blag will search the ``templates`` directory first, and fall back to blag's default built-in templates. ============ ====================================== =================== Template Used For Variables ============ ====================================== =================== page.html pages (i.e. non-articles) site, content, meta article.html articles (i.e. blog posts) site, content, meta archive.html archive- and landing page of the blog site, archive tags.html list of tags site, tags tag.html archive of Articles with a certain tag site, archive, tag ============ ====================================== =================== If you make use of Jinja2's template inheritance, you can of course have more template files in the ``templates`` directory. ``site`` This dictionary contains the site configuration, namely: ``base_url``, ``title``, ``description`` and ``author``. Don't confuse the site-title and -description with the title and description of individual pages or articles. ``content`` HTML, converted from markdown. ``meta`` ``meta`` stands for all metadata elements available in the article or page. Please be aware that those are not wrapped in a dictionary, but **directly** available as variables. ``archive`` A list of ``[destination path, context]`` tuples, where the context are the respective variables that would be provided to the individual page or article. ``tags`` List of tags. ``tag`` A tag. Metadata --------- blag supports metadata elements in the markdown files. They must come before the content and should be separated from the content with a blank line: .. code-block:: markdown title: foo date: 2020-02-02 tags: this, is, a, test description: some subtitle this is my content. [...] blag supports *arbitrary* metadata in your documents, and you can use them freely in you templates. However, some metadata elements are treated special: ``date`` If a document contains the ``date`` element, it is treated as an **article**, otherwise as a **page**. Additionally, ``date`` elements are expected to be in ISO format (e.g. ``1980-05-05 21:58``). They are automatically converted into ``datetime`` objects with the local timezone attached. ``tags`` Tags are interpreted as a comma separated list. All elements are stripped and converted to lower-case: ``tags: foo, Foo Bar, BAZ`` becomes: ``[foo, foo bar, baz]``. Tags in **articles** are also used to generate the tag-pages, that aggregate all articles per tag. ``title`` and ``description`` The title and description are used in the html header and in the atom feed. Devserver --------- blag provides a devserver which you can use for local web-development. The devserver provides a simple web server, serving your site in http://localhost:8000 and will automatically rebuild the project when it detects modifications in one of the ``content``, ``static`` and ``templates`` directories. .. code-block:: sh $ blag serve