gistfile1.txt

What I Want In A Site Generator: An Essay

by Ben Bleything
Mrs. Anderson's 4th Grade Class
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All of the static generators I've looked at so far have some nice
features, but none of them really come together for me.  I like what
Jekyll is doing with a flat directory of posts, but I _don't_ like how
you have no control over where those posts go.

Similarly, I like the control I can have in Webby of what files go
where, but I don't want to have to create directories for every blag
post.

I haven't really fleshed the idea out yet, but here's a first stab at
how I'd like to manage my site:

.
|-- _meta
|   |-- config.yml
|   |-- layouts
|   |   |-- post.liquid
|   |   `-- project.liquid
|   |-- sitemap.yml
|   `-- snippets
|       `-- post_list.liquid
|-- _posts
|   |-- 2009-01-01-happy-new-year.textile
|   `-- 2009-01-12-i-wrote-a-thing.textile
|-- _projects
|   |-- irb.textile
|   `-- midiator.textile
|-- atom.xml
|-- css
|-- images
`-- index.html

Things to note:

- with the exception of _meta, there's a 1:1 relationship between the
  _<word> dirs at the top level and the layouts specified inside _meta
- anything inside (say) _posts uses the post layout and is available in
  site.posts (or similar) inside the templates
- likewise, anything inside _projects blah blah blah

So, from here it looks pretty much like jekyll, right?

Some differences:

- configurable landing spots... want all your projects to be in
  /project/<name>.html? okay! blog posts in /blog/YYYY/MM/DD/slug.html?
  okay!
- arbitrary collections of "dynamic" pages

Anyway, those are just my ideas right now.  If there's a system out
there that does what I want, please to tell me!