Petrify

A flexible static site generator for node.js

Why use a static site generator?

• Static files are fast - You never know, you might just get slashdotted...
• Plays well with version control - You can have a complete history of both the content and the code in git, easily backed up.
• You can use your text editor of choice - I like to write my content in Vim, not in a textarea!
• Less security concerns - No SQL injections or other attacks associated with dynamic content or exposing your admin area to the web.
• Easy to deploy - You can just rsync or FTP the site to your server, nothing fancy needs to be installed on it. You could have git do this automatically on commit if you like... or, like me, you can have the server rebuild the site automatically when you push to it.
• You no longer need to serve your own dynamic content - Lots of content you would normally want a database for can now be included using JavaScript. You can add comments via Disqus, you can embed calendars from Google Calendar... Many of these problems have already been solved. better. ;)

Why use Petrify?

• Flexibility - Most other site generators focus on blogs, but Petrify can be used for a wide range of sites, from project documentation to event listings. This is achieved through allowing you to parse the content data in whichever way you like.
• Write your views in JavaScript - Petrify uses JavaScript for parsing content. JavaScript is a widely used language, and if you know enough about HTML to want to use a static site generator, you probably know enough JavaScript to use Petrify.

Petrify Tasks

Petrify splits the build steps into tasks, which are just Node.js modules (that can be published to npm). You can extend Petrify using your own tasks written in JavaScript, or by installing tasks created by others. Here are some of the useful tasks published as part of the Petrify system:

• Markdown content loading (with YAML metadata)
• Handlebars template rendering
• File concatenation