This site is statically generated with Lightning, a blogging engine I wrote. The basic idea is that I write all of my content like this:
About this site
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This site is statically generated with [Lightning][lightning]
Then a script converts it into the HTML/CSS that you are reading now.
There are many such projects, (eg. Hyde, Octopress). This approach provides clear advantages over a traditional database-based blog:
- Use any editor you like.
- Use Markdown for structured text.
- No worries about database management and security.
Lightning
I wrote Lightning to scratch some specific itches (which may or may not have been addressed in other similar projects by the time you read this):
- Incremental builds (only rebuild what changed).
- Quick deployment.
- Logical placement of content-specific assets (in same dir as content).
- Decouple content structure from output structure.
- Minimalist metadata header.
- Output that doesn't require htaccess, rewrite rules and other HTTPD specific setup.
An early version of Lightning is available on github.