As far as I know all the static pages have been updated. I'm now working to integrate this with the new dynamic backend stuff and migrate massassi to a new server.
I've decided to keep a lot of the dynamic stuff dynamic and used that as an opportunity to learn Django. There is a separate repository for the dynamic stuff (news, levels, users, comments, ratings, etc.) that will also be open source. I'm doing final integration and when the site is ready, the source will be linked here.
The Massassi Temple is a long-running fan site for the game Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight (and Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy). The site was pretty popular back in the day but there aren't a lot of people editing these games anymore. However, I would like to keep the site alive and there are problems with the current design/system:
- it uses frames which means when people land on a specific page on the site they don't get a menu
- it's written in a combination of various languages, styles, and generations, and much of the dynamic content doesn't really need to be dynamic anymore
- it's got many generations of outdated and bad old HTML
- it takes too much maintenance
The goal of this repo is:
- get help updating the content to be in a format usable by the included static site generator
- make the content available/open so it doesn't disappear if I get hit by a bus, lose my job and can't make the hosting payments, etc.
- accept PRs that improve the site in any way (if you're planning on making a big change please let's talk first so no effort is wasted)
- Clone this repo.
- Make sure you have python3 installed
- cd into the cloned repo directory
- create a virtual environment:
- python3 -m venv ./env
- activate it:
- source env/bin/activate
- install dependencies:
- pip install -r requirements.txt
Most static site generators allow you to write your code in Markdown and then they output HTML. All my content is already in HTML. This generator supports both markdown and HTML source.
---
title: Adjoin Tutorial
author: Brian
email: [email protected]
---
Here is some markdown _content_ that will make up the page body.
---
---
title: Adjoin Tutorial
author: Brian
email: [email protected]
---
<p>Here is some HTML <strong>content</strong> that will make up the page body.</p>
Right now the external resources are scattered around the site and are
referenced either by /absolute_path/ or relative_path/. It makes sense to
keep storing the assets along side the content. This means that if the above
tutorial references some images, they should be stored in source/, relative
to the content just like they are in the current system.
The static site generator should copy every file from source/ into output/, but if the file has a recognized content extenstion (.md or .html, to start), processing will be applied. Everything else will just be copied directly.
Put your content in the source directory. Every file in source will be either
copied directly (images, other unrecognized file types) or processed and the
result placed in the output/ directory. For example, if you have index.html in
source/, it will be processed (templates applied, etc.) and then placed in
output/ as index.html. File extensions will not change. This is by
design! Since Massassi has a ton of different file extensions (.html, .htm,
.shtml, .phtml, .php, etc.), and since many of those pages are linked to from
external sites, I don't want the URLs to change.
Note: if you create a markdown file it should have the .md extension. By
default, markdown files get rendered and written as html with the .html
extension. If you want the resulting html file to have a different extension,
put the ext variable in the front matter. Example (page named foo.md):
---
title: some foo
ext: htm
---
page body goes here
In above example, the foo.md will be output as foo.htm (instead of
foo.html).
$ python build.py
By default, this will look for sources in source/ and will output to
output/. Probably eventually allow optionally setting --source_dir and
--output_dir via cli.
TODO: Consider versioning the output; for example, output to
output/YYYY-MM-DD_HH:MM:SS/ or something. (probably always output to a dated
directory and then symlink or copy to output/).
Upload the contents of the output/ directory to the server. Overwrite any
files that exist (that's the point). Probably a good idea to use rsync and
only update newer files (to save upload time).