Since we are in the process of adding a plugin repo for Nikola, I wanted to add a simple plugin there so that we can show how it works.
So here it is. You use this:
.. graphviz::
digraph foo {
"Idea" -> "tap tap tap" -> "Code";
}
And you get (assuming graphviz is installed, and this plugin is installed, etc.) this:
So, you want to publish a site and want to do it now? As in, really right now? And for free? And you are a Nikola user.
If you are a Dropbox user, open an account at Pancake.io
Then set your OUTPUT_DIR to something like /home/yourname/Dropbox/Apps/Pancake.io and
build. That's it. No deploy step.
Or open an account at Backlift and set OUTPUT_DIR to /home/yourname/Dropbox/Backlift/foo
where foo is your site's name as configured in Backlift. Build. No deploy step.
Or open an account on DropPages.com or KISSr or Site44.com or just use a Dropbox public folder.
Each of these services has advantages and disadvantages, from lame URLs to costing money, but hey, for a quick thing they are cool. You can always upgrade to the real thing later.
I have posted over 50 posts here about Nikola and most of them contain something like "Nikola, my static blog/site generator". Well, that's not the case anymore. From now on I will say "a static blog/site generator". Why? Let's see.
For starters, it's no longer true that I wrote it. Although I am still pushing more code that anyone, there are 54 other contributors. That number is astonishing. Why? Because I estimate there are around 200 Nikola users. That means the ratio of contributors to users is incredibly high.
That is probably explained because the way you build a site using Nikola is very programmer oriented. You could describe a static site generator as a sort of "site compiler" and not be far off the mark. Many of the benefits, like you can host your page sources in github! are completely misterious to non-programmers. So, I expected that number to be high, but, having a 25% user=>developer conversion rate? That's bizarre.
So, I suspect I did some things well with this project [1], and wanted to think them out loud, and try to further them.
One thing I think I did well was that it's an inclusive project. If you propose something you are getting heard and I am giving the proposal a fair shake. I may reject it, but not out of hand, but instead after some thought. And if I am unsure, it's accepted. I would rather get something I am not fond of than drive out a contributor [2] because I may change my mind, but a contributor that's gone is not coming back.
Same thing about granting commit rights: want them? You get them with the first successful PR by just asking.
Today there was another step on this direction: I am not the sole admin anymore. No longer is https://github.com/ralsina/nikola the canonical repo, it's now https://github.com/getnikola/nikola. The website? Not http://nikola.ralsina.me but http://getnikola.com, paid for 5 years. Added two admins to everything (the awesome damianavila and Kwpolska). Gave up sole control of a loooong list of things [3] and now I can get run over by a bus and things should not bitrot.
It protects those 54 other contributors and few hundred users from my ever losing heart or interest, which is a real risk, and should be alleviated.
I think the most important bit about converting users into contributors though, is that you just need to be friendly. And Nikola is largely a friendly project. And that's made it a lot of fun for the past year or so.
I once read that if you refused to use code written by assholes you could not boot any OS. Well, that may be true, but that doesn't mean being an asshole is OK. This is a small project that does a small thing. But at least I feel confident it's not written by assholes. And that's a victory in itself.
OTOH there are some major defficiencies still. Diversity is good in some areas (geographically, for instance) but AFAIK the percentage of women contributing to the codebase is 0% and I have no idea why, and I would love to improve that.
So, lots of work done, lots more to do. That's a good position to be in, I think.
Finally! This took a while because there was a lot of work done, but release 6.0.0 of Nikola my static site and blog generator is out.
Details, files, etc at github
I have tried, for this release, to do things better, be more careful and document as much as possible, as well as tried to hit most things that were hard to fix in a single backwards incompatible break.
Some of the new features are described in a series of blog posts: 1 2 3 4 5
Also: brand new modern themes site: http://themes.getnikola.com and new domain http://getnikola.com among many other tweaks.
Have fun!
I am planning to do a major release (version 6!) of Nikola my static blog and site generator the next weekend. It's a major version because there has been a ton of feature work done. So, I will do a quick series highlighting some of those improvements this week.
Unless you are happy with your site looking like straight bootstrap (and you really should not) CSS goes a long way towards making your pages look just the way you want them to.
The bad part is that, if you have done any CSS you will know CSS is a really, really crappy "language". That's why a whole philum of tools has been created that take a more powerful syntax and output CSS.
Nikola now has support for one of these, called LESS (although adding support for others like SASS should be very easy).
So, how does it work?
In your theme, put LESS files in the less/ folder.
Create less/targets and put there the files that should
be compiled using lessc, one per line.
There is no step 3
Nikola will automatically build output/assets/css/foo.css out of theme/foo/less/foo.less and
will even support the usual theme inheritance, so if there ever is a LESS-based theme out there,
you can just tweaks the files you want.
I personally am not writing that hypothetical LESS-based theme, but I am more than ready to help whoever wants to do one.