is metalsmith dead ?

[leviwheatcroft]

Obviously the project isn't dead, but the question has come up on the slack channel 3 times in the last 5 days. I guess that's a fair indication that many more people peruse metalsmith.io and wonder the same thing. Who knows how many would choose another project which happens to be a little bit more new and shiny.

As to how to address this on metalsmith.io, my suggestion would be to include a chart of package downloads.. it's in keeping with the terse nature of metalsmith.io, the download trend really does speak for itself, and while not relevant directly to metalsmith, I like that it uses dynamic content on a static site.

I'd be happy to have a go at implementing this but wanted to see if maintainers think it's a reasonable approach before I get started.

I've made a rad demo of what I'm talking about. Basically just use npmjs no-auth JSON downloads api, and render the data with chartistjs.

[Ajedi32]

Regarding the question in the title, see segmentio/metalsmith#243

TL;DR: While there hasn't been a lot of development on core lately (for various reasons), Metalsmith certainly isn't dead, and if changes to the core were necessary they'd be pretty easy to make.

And yeah, if you can find a way to include a graph like that on the site without distracting too much from other, more important content (such as the introduction to Metalsmith and explanation of how it's used) that'd be fine with me.

[leviwheatcroft]

I'm not going to have time to go ahead with this.

In addition, i have concerns about messing up a nice, fast, firm, experience on the page with an over engineered clunky graph.

Maybe its a good solution, but that's up to someone else to decide..

@axe312ger interested?

[axe312ger]

Basically yeah, time issue are another thing :D

How about a call-to-action button with the chart hidden in a lightbox:

[:rocket: Metalsmith is rising]

Or sth like this? Maybe I can catch one of our UX designers, but they are suuuper busy ^^

[leviwheatcroft]

Maybe wait and see what comes of @woody's hangout.. there might be other changes to the site.

I feel like maybe we've out grown a readme style single page, but that's a separate issue.

[axe312ger]

Valid point! :)

[woodyrew]

This discussion has been happening on the Slack channel also, we organised a meeting to discuss how we could make the perception that the Metalsmith project is not dead. The consensus being that the metalsmith.io site would go a long way to answering peoples common questions, getting started, and convey that the project's adoption is steadily increasing over time.

I have added the following users as collaborators on this repo to help to this end.

• @axe312ger
• @tsdorsey
• @leviwheatcroft
• @darisi

Please branch and create pull requests rather than committing directly on master. It would also be good for at least one other person to review before merging, don't hesitate to @ mention someone for a review.

[108adams]

I find the project dead, as after 1hour of coding and googling I cannot still get the simplest, one page example from the front page of the project to work.

welcome our "No files to process" problem.

sorry, no more time to waste, Gatsby's waiting :(

P.S. my index.js:

var Metalsmith  = require('metalsmith');
var collections = require('metalsmith-collections');
var debug       = require('metalsmith-debug');
var layouts     = require('metalsmith-layouts');
var markdown    = require('metalsmith-markdown');
var permalinks  = require('metalsmith-permalinks');

Metalsmith(__dirname)         // __dirname defined by node.js:
                              // name of current working directory
  .metadata({                 // add any variable you want and use them in layout-files
    sitename: "My Static Site & Blog",
    siteurl: "http://example.com/",
    description: "It's about saying »Hello« to the world.",
    generatorname: "Metalsmith",
    generatorurl: "http://metalsmith.io/"
  })
  .source('./src')            // source directory
  .destination('./build')     // destination directory
  .clean(true)                // clean destination before
  .use(markdown())            // transpile all md into html
  .use(permalinks()) 
  .use(layouts({
      engine: 'handlebars'
  }))             // wrap layouts around html
  .use(debug())
  .build(function(err, files) {      // build process
    if (err) console.log(err);       // error handling is required
  });

and in src I had index.md, index.hbs, index.html, but regardless the suffix no output ever generated, the same error all the time.

[michaelkornblum]

Adam, add a default entry in the layouts object that defines your default handlebars template. I ran into a similar problem some time ago. If memory serves I think that did the trick.

[ismay]

@108adams Try our slack channel or the layouts readme. It’s just a simple configuration problem, nothing wrong with metalsmith.

[ismay]

So I think we can close this, as discussed on the slack channel. The project is alive and actively maintained. If there are still remaining issues maybe we can split them up into more concrete issues or discuss it on slack.