# easy-site
Building static empires with node.js.
Base on [romulus|https://github.com/felixge/node-romulus].
**Install:** `[sudo] npm install -g easy-site`
## Features
Easy-site is a static site generator (like jekyll) featuring:
* a clear folder convention
* ejs template processing
* generating css from less files
* github flavored markdown
* a local development server behaving like github pages
* deploying to github pages
**Planned:**
* page scripts that run before rendering
* partials that can be included on any page
* plugins (themes, blogging, google analytics, disqus, etc.)
You should use easy-site if you want a simple tool for creating static github
pages with node.js.
## Creating a static page
Create a new directory, and inside this directory create the folder structure below:
**Note:** Only the `pages` folder is required, the other folders are optional.
```
/pages
/layouts
/public
```
Now create a file called `pages/index.html` and put some HTML into it:
```html
Hello World
```
Run this to build your static site:
```bash
$ easy-site build my-site
```
You should now see a new folder called `my-site` containing your `index.html`
page exactly as you wrote it.
**Note:** If you ommit the `my-site` argument, easy-site will default to naming
your output folder `build`.
For testing your site, you should run the local development server at
[http://localhost:8080/](http://localhost:8080/) by typing this:
```bash
$ easy-site //default port 8080
$ easy-site 9000 // port 9000
```
## Layouts
In order to make this more interesting, let's say you want to wrap your new
page in a fancy layout. To do this you need to change your `pages/index.html`
file like this:
```html
<% this.layout = 'default' %>
Hello World
```
Now you need to create the layout itself, so add a file called
`layouts/default.html`:
```html
My static empire
My Header
<%- page %>
```
That's it, you should now see your page being rendered inside your template!
## Accessing page variables in your layout
Let's say you want to set a `title` variable in your page that should be used
by the layout. For this, add this to your page template:
```html
<% this.title = 'My title'; %>
```
And output it in your layout like this:
```html
<%= this.title %>
```
## Generating css from less files
Now that you have this wonderful site, you probably want to style it. To do so,
create a file called `public/css/main.less`:
```css
body{
h1{
color: #0080FF;
}
}
```
Sweet, your headline is now featuring my favorite color!
## Static file support
Any file placed in the `public` folder will be included at the top level of the
build output folder. The local development server also supports serving them.
## Using markdown
easy-site natively supports
[github flavored markdown](https://github.com/isaacs/github-flavored-markdown)
for page files. Using markdown is as easy as creating a file with
a `.md` extension like `pages/markdown-rocks.md` and adding some markdown to it:
```html
<% this.layout = 'default'; %>
Markdown is **fun**, and you can still use EJS inside of your markdown
templates.
```
This page now will be served at `/markdown-rocks`.
## Deploying to github pages
Deploying to github pages is as simple as:
```
easy-site deploy
```
This should work well for project pages, but has not been tested for
organization pages yet.
## License
MIT License.