README

mdshell - Write your blog straight from the terminal.

Description

This is a simple static site generator (SSG), or "blog making thing".

mdshell requires only Bash and Perl, and builds HTML files from Markdown files.

The name mdshell refers to the fact you can combine Markdown and Bash sub-shells in your blog posts to dynamically produce the HTML output.

This is a fast way of producing documentation for any installed programs or commands, and a nice easy way to write blog posts in Markdown.

Features

• Written in Bash shell script
• Simple command-line interface (use in the terminal)
• Builds a fast blog with great SEO and mobile support
• Creates blog posts or custom pages, built from Markdown or HTML.
• Generates index pages for categories, tags, authors and more.
• Generates a valid RSS feed and XML sitemap.
• Define your site and page data in assets/data/ as YAML, CSV or Bash variables & arrays
• Uses a mustache-like templating system, with liquid-style filters
• Auto convert URLs to embedded content for Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, etc..
• Embed shell, python, ruby etc, in your Markdown to create dynamic Markdown output!
• Includes a "Contact" page that works out of the box! (uses formspree.io, requires JS)
• Includes a fast page search, with highlighted matches (uses Jets, requires JS)
• Supports fullscreen, native app experience on mobile if added to Homescreen
• Supports code syntax highlighting (requires Pygments, default theme is monokai)
• Optionally use Google Fonts to choose custom web fonts
• Optionally use Unpkg.com to manage JavaScript libraries/dependencies
• Optionally use Git for saving, managing and reverting versions and deployments
• Optionally use GitHub Pages for free, fast, and secure (SSL enabled) site hosting
• Supports many other web hosting options too (GitLab Pages, Netlify, others).

Setup

.app/setup.sh - set site defaults, settings and options.

source .site_setup - source the app and site settings - important!

server [start|stop] - start/stop a local web server.

Usage

new post - create a new post. Follow the on-screen instructions - a .mdsh file will be created for you containing your chosen options as YAML front matter. After you've saved your new post, all relevant index pages will be updated and re-built.

publish "message" - save and publish latest changes.

Advanced usage

Customising posts

new post -all - creates a new post, as above, but allows overriding various site defaults.

Creating pages

rebuild file.mdsh > file.html - create a page from a .mdsh file (recommended).

rebuild file.md > file.html - create a page from a Markdown file.

rebuild "$html" > file.html - create a page from an HTML string.

Or manually:

page_title="My cool page" \
page_slug="my-cool-page"  \
page_descr="Some thing"   \
page_layout="main"        \
page_stylesheet="main"    \
  .app/create_page.sh "$body_html" > my-cool-page.html

Rebuilding pages

If you edit any existing Markdown or .mdsh files, you may need to re-build the HTML pages:

rebuild - re-build all index pages (authors, categories, tags, etc).

rebuild file.mdsh file.html - re-build a specific page from a .mdsh file (recommended).

rebuild file.md file.html - re-build a specific page from its Markdown file.

rebuild -all - re-build all posts from their Markdown files.

rebuild -ALL - re-build all posts from their .mdsh files.

rebuild tags:foo,bar - rebuild tag index pages for tags foo and bar

rebuild authors:sc0ttj homepage - rebuild author page for sc0ttj, and the homepage

Updating sitemap

After publishing your new post or page, you can update your sitemap.

rebuild sitemap - re-build and publish an updated XML sitemap file.

Documentation

Type help in the terminal.

Also, read the wiki for more help and usage information.

To do

See Issues page for planned features and known bugs.