Started in Ruby, with a conversion attempted in Mythryl.

• Compiled Website usage
• Compiled Website demo
• Compiled Website TODO
• Compiled Website bugs

• Compiled website JavaScript

About ∞

My compiled website project is a document management engine that builds a website.

It’s core philosophy is to have less “moving parts” and a shorter “chain of trust” by relying on as few intermediate steps and tools as possible. Also see my compiled website reasoning.

• Like a Wiki only better.

  • Automated linking.
  • A trivial markup language. No learning curve.
  • For the full feature list, see the compiled website demo.

• Intelligent features

  • An automated table of contents with links to each section.
  • A sitemap is automatically-generated.

• Unrestricted content

  • Full HTML, JavaScript and CSS are available. There is no special process, simply add your code right alongside your plain text.

• A simple but smart design

  • A center column with the header at the top. Left/right columns waste space.
    – But if you want to change the style, you can hack the header_and_footer.rb file yourself.
  • The center column automatically expands and contracts to fit each viewer’s screen. There’s a maximum width so very wide screens won’t have long unreadable text.
  • Easily-selected styles which are remembered as the user surfs.

• No database or file format

  • Plain text files.

• No server-scripting or hosting requirements

  • Plain .html files, the fastest and most secure form of website possible.
  • No local web server or special setup needed (no LAMPP/etc).

• Locally-edited, remotely-mirrored

  • A local copy is kept on your computer, and is accessed as fast as any other document. No loading screens or waiting to edit.
  • No net connection needed for surfing or editing. Point your browser at your local copy.

• Few tools/dependencies, all free and open source

  • The Ruby 1.9 core and standard libraries.
  • HTML Tidy is optional, but recommended.
  • A website-synchroniser. I use LFTP.
    – On Windows you can try one of 1 or LFTP for windows. I haven’t tested these.
  • A web browser. I use Firefox.
  • A text editor. I use Geany.

• Standards-compliant and SEO-friendly

  • The default is pretty good, but you can optionally use HTML Tidy to guarantee your preferred compliance strictness.

• Hackable and customizable

  • If it doesn’t do what you want, contact me to consider your suggestion or just hack it in yourself! My programming style has a straightforward layout and design. An intermediate programmer can quickly and easily make simple changes.
  • Ruby is an extremely easy language to learn, even for a complete novice! Check out Hackity Hack! or Try Ruby!. Complete books and tutorials are available online for free.

Getting ∞

https://codeload.github.com/spiralofhope/compiled-website/zip/master

Collaborating ∞

I have only intermediate skill with Ruby, and so I just took what I knew and worked with it. I’m not necessarily doing anything “The Ruby Way”, nor am I following best practises.

At this point I’m not looking for someone to swoop in and either rewrite things or help me do things better. I want to improve on my own terms.

If you end up using my code, let me know.. It’s a big motivator.

Installing ∞

(coming soon)

TODO: Notes within the project itself.

Operating ∞

(coming soon)

TODO: Notes within the project itself.

Usage ∞

(coming soon)

In the mean time, see compiled website usage. (to be updated)

TODO: Notes within the project itself.

Technologies and Dependencies ∞

TODO: Notes within the project itself.

JavaScript ∞

See Compiled website JavaScript for those.

(to be reviewed)

Visitor Tracking ∞

For simplicity’s sake, there’s nothing built-in.

I happen to use statcounter

Alternatives and Comparisons ∞

There are a number of tools which I’ve bumped into. Some of these I’ve had extensive experience with, and others I’ve just toyed with. Maybe someone else out there would appreciate my research and can use this info.

Wouldn’t you know that even though I did a lot of research and experimentation to try (and fail) to satisfy my needs with some other tools, that after I started working on this and had a decent version working.. only THEN did I start finding other really cool projects. Oh well!

To help you find something that’s suited to you, go and check out the tools listed below. Contact me if you find a tool or tools not listed here, especially if you have a special preference for it.

Wiki engines ∞

I’ve had personal experience with these and probably a half-dozen others.. I haven’t thought about making a list of them until now, so this list is pretty brief.

• Korma – Git based blog

  • https://github.com/practicingruby/rbp-blog
  • https://web.archive.org/web/20160402000222/http://blog.rubybestpractices.com:80/
• MediaWiki
• DokuWiki
• Instiki
• I wish I could remember the one simple wiki which had automatic linking, that’s really what inspired me to build my own wiki just for that feature.

• Various wikis in issue tracking systems. Trac, etc.

–

• Sputnik

  • Abandoned in 2012

• chase4926.github.com

  • Build a site collected and converted from text files. Automatically adds links when a page name is mentioned.
  • As of 2024-02-10 – last updated 2016-05-10

Similar engines ∞

• https://getpelican.com/ [ 1 ]

  • https://docs.getpelican.com/en/latest/importer.html

• Nikola

  • https://www.google.com/search?q=importing+wordpress+to+Nikola

• Jekyll

  • https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll
  • A simple, blog-aware, static site generator (Ruby).
  • It takes a template directory (representing the raw form of a website), runs it through Textile or Markdown and Liquid converters, and spits out a complete, static website suitable for serving with Apache or your favorite web server. This is also the engine behind GitHub Pages.
  • https://import.jekyllrb.com/docs/wordpress/

• AsciiDoc [ 2 ]

  • A text document format for writing short documents, articles, books and UNIX man pages. AsciiDoc files can be translated to HTML and DocBook markups.
  • awb (AsciiDoc Website Builder)
  • ADGen
• Hugo – static website generator

• nanoc [ 3 ]

  • A tool that runs on your local computer and compiles documents written in formats such as Markdown, Textile, Haml… into a static web site consisting of simple HTML files, ready for uploading to any web server.
• https://webgen.gettalong.org/

–

• Webby [ 4 ]

  • As of 2024-02-10 – Officially abandoned 2011-08-09, last updated 2009-11-13

• was pakyow

  • Abandoned: As of 2024-02-10 – the last https://x.com/pakyow update was 2019-12-15 and the domain is dead.

• stickwiki has a nice philosophy.

  • As of 2024-02-10 – last updated 2012-02-08

• _why‘s estate [ 5 ]

  • Unmaintained, last updated a long time ago.
• was gentext

• buildhtml2 [ 6 ]

  • uses reST
  • Officially abandoned, last updated 2006-01-29.

Related tools ∞

• txt2tags

  • A document generator. It reads a text file with minimal markup as **bold** and //italic// and converts it to a number of formats.

• Shell scripting (Bash, Zsh) and the common Linux tools: cat, grep, sed, AWK, etc.

Random notes ∞

• I’d need to edit or otherwise make configurable my autotest scripting, and have it automatically begin the daemon.. so that I don’t have to edit/save compile.rb to make the wiki live.

• Why do I have the separate text file pop up? I don’t need that for this regular usage. I should separate my sync concept from the actual regular running / everyday use of the scripting.

Footnotes

1. was https://blog.getpelican.com/ [ ↩ ]
2. was http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/index.html [ ↩ ]
3. was http://nanoc.stoneship.org/ [ ↩ ]
4. was http://webby.rubyforge.org/ [ ↩ ]
5. was https://github.com/yjerem/estate [ ↩ ]
6. was http://brewer123.home.comcast.net/~brewer123/projects/buildhtml2/ [ ↩ ]