Question

I’m designing a simple website with no dynamic content that I want to be light and portable — no PHP or other server-side scripting needed, or wanted. I’m running into a question that I’ve had a few times before.

I’d love to be able to write common elements (head, foot, navigation) once and write the individual pages on the site with content only, then run this mysterious utility to compile everything it into a set of HTML files ready for uploading. A page might be written like this:

Title: Our Services
Top Navigation: Yes
Scripts: jquery, lightbox

<p>
    Example, Inc. offers a wide range of…

It’d be great if the engine also had logic that lets me include or exclude elements (like Top Navigation above) from each page, and automate tasks like labelling the current page in the navbar:

<a href="/services"{page == 'services' ? ' class="current"' : ""}>Services</a>

Are there any engines out there like this?

Answer 1

I’d head directly towards Template-Toolkit for this. It comes with the ttree utility for building a static site.

You can handle the last part of your question with something like:

[% 
    INCLUDE 'navbar.tt' 
    page = 'services'
%]