Hacker Public Radio

Correspondent

Chess Griffin

Host ID: 76
linuxreality.com
email: chess.nospam@nospam.chessgriffin.com
episodes: 3

hpr1203 :: templer: a static html generator

In today's show Chess talks to us about a static html generator written in perl called templer

• https://github.com/skx/templer
• http://www.steve.org.uk/

Templer

Templer is yet another static site generator, written in Perl.

It makes use of the HTML::Template module for performing variable expansion within pages and layouts, along with looping and conditional-statement handling.

Templer has evolved over time for my own personal use, but I believe it is sufficiently generic it could be useful to others.

My motivation for putting it together came from the desire to change several hand-made, HTML-coded, sites to something more maintainable such that I could easily change the layout in one place.

The design evolved over time but the key reason for keeping it around is that it differs from many other simple static-generators in several ways:

• You may define global variables for use in your pages/layouts.
• A page may define and use page-specific variables.
• You may change the layout on a per-page basis if you so wish.
  • This was something that is missing from a lot of competing tools.
• Conditional variable expansion is supported, via HTML::Template.
• File contents, shell commands, and file-globs may be used in the templates
  • This allows the trivial creation of galleries, for example.
  • These are implemented via plugins.
• You may also embed perl code in your pages.

Another key point is that the layouts allow for more than a single simple "content" block to be placed into them - you can add arbitrary numbers of optional side-menus, for example.

Although this tool was written and used with the intent you'd write your site-content in HTML you can write your input pages in Textile or Markdown if you prefer (these inputs are supported via plugins).

hpr0034 :: Cowon D2 Review

Chess Griffin's, got a Cowon D2, portable media player. He likes it. He likes it a lot. When he gets done reviewing all its features, you're going to want one, too. Linux and BSD users, this may be the device you've been searching for.
Cowon D2 Product Page

Shownotes by: diggsit

hpr0020 :: lighttpd

Looking for a nimble and secure web server? Chess Griffin, suggests you look into the LIGHTTPD (Light-tee). He uses it, and in this episode he illuminates the reasons you may want to, too. http://www.lighttpd.net/


Shownotes by: diggsit

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