Serif is a static site generator and blogging system powered by markdown files and an optional admin interface complete with drag-and-drop image uploading. (Check out the simple video demo.)
Serif releases you from managing a file system so you can focus on writing content.
Having problems with Serif? Open an issue on GitHub, use the Serif Google Group, or join the Freenode#serif IRC channel at irc://irc.freenode.net/serif.
To get started with Serif based on a site skeleton:
gem install serif # install serif
cd path/to/some/place # go to where you'll be creating your site directory
serif new # create an initial site skeleton
# ... edit your files how you want them ...
serif generate # generate the site based on the source files
serif dev # serve up the site for local testing purposes
Now visit http://localhost:8000/ to view the site.
Serif is a lot like Jekyll with a few extra moving parts. Its main aim is to provide two things:
Serif is sort of a blend between Jekyll, Second Crack and ideas from Svbtle. There should be flexibility with writing content, such as using the web interface, rsyncing from a remote machine, or editing a draft file on the remote server and having everything happen for you.
Serif is released under the MIT license. See LICENSE for details.
The quickest way to get changes contributed:
git checkout -b master new-feature --- do not make changes on master! Make sure that anything added or changed has a test in the test/ directory. Use the existing files as examples. All tests for new/changed behaviour should pass.For more info on development, see the section at the bottom of this README.
Installation is via RubyGems. If you don't have Ruby installed, I recommend using RVM.
$ gem install serif
$ cd path/to/site/directory
$ serif generate
$ cd path/to/site/directory
$ ENV=production serif admin
Once this is run, visit http://localhost:4567/admin and log in with whatever is in _config.yml as auth credentials.
Drop the ENV=production part if you're running it locally.
This runs a very simple web server that is mainly designed to test what the site will look like and let you make changes to stuff like CSS files without having to regenerate everything. Changes to post content will not be detected (yet).
$ cd path/to/site/directory
$ serif dev
Once this is run, visit http://localhost:8000.
You can generate a skeletal directory to get you going, using the new command.
$ cd path/to/site/directory
$ serif new
The structure of a Serif site is something like this:
.
├── _site
├── _layouts
│ └── default.html
├── _drafts
│ ├── some-draft
│ └── another-unfinished-post
├── _posts
│ ├── 2012-01-01-a-post-you-have-written
│ ├── 2012-02-28-another-post
│ └── 2012-03-30-and-a-third
├── _templates
│ ├─── post.html
│ └─── archive_page.html
├── _trash
├── _config.yml
├── css
│ └── ...
├── js
│ └── ...
├── images
│ └── ...
├── 404.html
├── favicon.ico
├── feed.xml
└── index.html
_siteThis is where generated content gets saved. You should serve files out of here, be it with Nginx or Apache. You should assume everything in this directory will get erased at some point in future. Don't keep anything in it!
_layoutsThis is where layouts for the site go. The file default.html is used by default, and individual files can override this by setting a Layout: foo header, which will use _layouts/foo.html instead.
_drafts and _postsDrafts go in _drafts, posts go in _posts. Simple enough.
Posts must have filenames in the format of YYYY-MM-DD-your-post. Drafts do not have a date part, since they're drafts and not published.
All files in these directories are assumed to be written in Markdown, with simple HTTP-style headers. The Markdown renderer is Kramdown, with Smarty for punctuation tweaks, and Pygments to get syntax highlighting for GitHub-flavoured fenced code blocks (although you'll need your own CSS).
Here's an example post:
Title: A title of a post
Created: 2012-01-01T14:30:00+00:00
Something something.
1. A list
2. Of some stuff
3. Goes here
End of the post
The headers are similar to Jekyll's YAML front matter, but here there are no formatting requirements beyond Key: value pairs. Header names are case-insensitive (so title is the same as Title), but values are not.
File headers like Title: Some title can contain any header, but certain headers have special meaning in Serif.
| Header name | Meaning |
|---|---|
Created | For a post, timestamp for when it was first published. Must be a string that Ruby's Time class can parse. Means nothing for drafts. |
Updated | For a post, timestamp for when it was last updated. Must be a string that Ruby's Time class can parse. Means nothing for drafts. |
Title | Title for the draft or post. |
Update | For a post, When given the value of now (i.e., Update: now), the Updated timestamp will be updated on the next site generation. Means nothing for drafts. |
Publish | For a draft, when given the value of now (i.e., Publish: now), the draft will be published on the next site generation (and the Created set appropriately). Means nothing for a post. |
Permalink | For a post, overrides the default permalink value defined in _config.yml. Note that this is interpolated, so :title in the permalink value will be replaced according to regular permalink rules. Means nothing for a draft. |
Note that while it is possible for you to manually handle timestamp values, it is recommended that you rely on using the value of now for Update and Publish.
If you change the permalink value for a published post, you will break any inbound URLs as well as, e.g., any feeds that rely on the URL as a unique persistent ID.
_templatesTwo templates are available:
post.html, which will be used to render individual post pages.archive_page.html, which will be used to render individual archive pages.Both must be valid Liquid templates.
_trashDeleted drafts go in here just in case you want them back.
_config.ymlUsed for configuration settings.
Here's a sample configuration:
admin:
username: username
password: password
permalink: /blog/:year/:month/:title
image_upload_path: /images/:timestamp_:name
If a permalink setting is not given in the configuration, the default is /:title. There are the following options available for permalinks:
| Placeholder | Value |
|---|---|
:title | URL "slug", e.g., "your-post-title" |
:year | Year as given in the filename, e.g., "2012" |
:month | Month as given in the filename, e.g., "01" |
:day | Day as given in the filename, e.g., "28" |
NOTE: if you change the permalink value, you will break existing URLs for published posts, in addition to, e.g., any feed ID values that depend on the post URL never changing.
The image_upload_path configuration setting is an absolute path and will be relative to the base directory of your site, used in the admin interface to control where files are sent. The default value is /images/:timestamp_:name. Similar to permalinks, the following placeholders are available:
| Placeholder | Value |
|---|---|
:slug | URL "slug" at the time of upload, e.g., "your-post-title" |
:year | Year at the time of upload, e.g., "2013" |
:month | Month at the time of upload, e.g., "02" |
:day | Day at the time of upload, e.g., "16" |
:name | Original filename string of the image being uploaded |
:timestamp | Unix timestamp, e.g., "1361057832685" |
Any slashes in image_upload_path are converted to directories.
Any other file in the directory's root will be copied over exactly as-is, with two caveats.
First, images/ (by default) is used for the drag-and-drop file uploads from the admin interface. Files are named with <timestamp>_ <name>.<extension>. This is configurable, see the section on configuration.
Second, for any file ending in .html or .xml:
For example, this would work as an about.html:
<h1>All about me</h1>
<p>Where do I begin? {{ 'Well...' }}</p>
And so would this:
title: My about page
<h1>All about me</h1>
<p>Where do I begin? Well...</p>
In both cases, the output is, of course:
<h1>All about me</h1>
<p>Where do I begin? Well...</p>
If you have a file like feed.xml that you wish to not be contained within a layout, specify layout: none in the header for the file.
To publish a draft, either do so through the admin interface available with serif admin, or add a publish: now header to the draft:
title: A draft that will be published
publish: now
This is a draft that will be published now.
On the next site generation (serif generate) this draft will be automatically published, using the current time as the creation timestamp.
When you update a post, you need to remember to change the updated time. As luck would have it, Serif takes care of timestamps for you! Just use a header of update: now at the top of your published post after making your changes:
title: My blog post
Created: 2013-01-01T12:01:30+00:00
update: now
Now the next time the site is generated, the timestamp will be updated:
title: My blog post
Created: 2013-01-01T12:01:30+00:00
Updated: 2013-03-18T19:03:30+00:00
Admin users: this is all done for you.
By default, archive pages are made available at /archive/:year/month, e.g., /archive/2012/11. Individual archive pages can be customised by editing the _templates/archive_page.html file, which is used for each month.
Within the archive_page.html template, you have access to the variables month, which is a Ruby Date instance, and posts for the posts within that month.
To disable archive pages, or configure the URL format, see the section on configuration.
To link to archive pages, there is a site.archive template variable available in all pages. The structure of site.archive is a nested map starting at years:
{
"posts" => [...],
"years" => [
{
"date" => Date.new(2012),
"posts" => [...],
"months" => [
{ "date" => Date.new(2012, 12), "archive_url" => "/archive/2012/12", "posts" => [...] },
{ "date" => Date.new(2012, 11), "archive_url" => "/archive/2012/11", "posts" => [...] },
...
]
}
]
}
Using site.archive, you can iterate over years, then iterate over months and use archive_url to link to the archive page for that given month within the year.
Configuration goes in _config.yml and must be valid YAML. Here's a sample configuration with available options:
admin:
username: myusername
password: mypassword
permalink: /posts/:title
archive:
enabled: yes
url_format: /archive/:year/:month
admin contains the credentials used when accessing the admin interface. This information is private, of course.
permalink is the URL format for individual post pages. The default permalink value is /:title. For an explanation of the format of permalinks, see above.
archive contains configuration options concerning archive pages. enabled can be used to toggle whether archive pages are generated. If set to no or false, no archive pages will be generated. By default, this value is yes.
The archive url_format configuration option is the format used for archive pages. The default value is /archive/:year/:month. This must include both year and month. Visiting, e.g., /archive/2012/11 would render posts made in November 2012. See the section on archive pages above for more details.
To serve the site, set any web server to use /path/to/site/directory/_site as its root. NOTE: URLs generated in the site do not contain .html "extensions" by default, so you will need a rewrite rule. Here's an example rewrite for nginx:
error_page 404 @not_found_page;
location / {
index index.html index.htm;
try_files $uri.html $uri $uri/ =404;
}
location @not_found_page {
rewrite .* /404.html last;
}
Use ENV=production serif generate to regenerate the site for production.
The admin server can be started on the live server the same way it's started locally (with ENV=production). To access it from anywhere on the web, you will need to proxy/forward /admin HTTP requests to port 4567 to let the admin web server handle it. As an alternative, you could forward a local port with SSH --- you might use this if you didn't want to rely on just HTTP basic auth, which isn't very secure over non-HTTPS connections.
The admin interface is intended to be a minimal place to focus on writing content. You are free to customise the admin interface by creating a stylesheet at $your_site_directory/css/admin/admin.css. As an example, if your main site's stylesheet is /css/style.css, you can use an @import rule to inherit the look-and-feel of your main site editing content and looking at rendered previews.
/* Import the main site's CSS to provide a similar look-and-feel for the admin interface */
@import url("/css/style.css");
/* more customisation below */
These tags can be used in templates, in addition to the standard Liquid filters and tags. For example:
{{ post.title | smarty }}
{{ post.content | markdown }}
{% file_digest foo.css prefix:- %}
date with 'now'
This is a standard filter, but there is a workaround for
{{ 'now' | date: "%Y" }} to work, so you can use this in templates.
markdown
e.g., {{ post.content | markdown }}.
This runs the given input through a Markdown + SmartyPants renderer, with fenced codeblocks enabled.
smarty
e.g., {{ post.title | smarty }}.
This runs the given input through a SmartyPants processor, so quotes, dashes and ellipses come out better. Note that the markdown filter already does SmartyPants processing.
strip
Strips trailing and leading whitespace.
e.g., {{ " hello " | strip }} will render as hello.
xmlschema
e.g., {{ post.created | xmlschema }}.
Takes a Time value and returns an ISO8601-format string, as per Ruby's Time#xmlschema definition.
Example output: 2013-02-16T23:55:22+01:00
If the time value is in UTC: 2013-02-16T22:55:22Z
encode_uri_component
e.g., example.com/foo?url=http://mysite.com{{ post.url | encode_uri_component }}
Intended to provide the functionality of JavaScript's encode_uri_component() function. Essentially:
encodes the entire input so it is usable as a query string parameter.
file_digest <path> [prefix:<prefix>]
(Note: For this tag to return anything, ENV=production must be set as an environment variable.)
Computes a hex digest of the contents of <path>, optionally prefixed with <prefix>. <path> is delimited by whitespace.
Useful for URL fingerprinting for long-lived caching.
In addition to those mentioned above, such as the archive page variables, there are others. This may not be an exhaustive list.
These should be available in any template:
{{ site }} --- a container for the site itself, containing:
{{ site.posts }} --- the published posts of the site{{ site.latest_update_time }} --- a Ruby Time instance for the latest time that any post was updated. Useful for RSS/Atom feeds.{{ site.archives }} --- a nested hash structure that groups posts by month. See above for how to use it.{{ draft_preview }} -- Set to true if this is part of generating a draft preview.{{ post_page }} -- Set to true if this is part of generating a regular published post.A published post has variables like post.url and post.title. Here's a list of what's available wherever {{ post }} is available. If the variable is, e.g., post.url, use as {{ post.url }}.
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
post.title | Title of the post |
post.url | Permalink to the post based on the config or any permalink header on the post |
post.slug | URL slug of the post. A filename like 2013-06-02-my-post will correspond to a {{ post.slug }} value of my-post |
post.created | A Ruby Time instance for the time the post was first published. |
post.updated | A Ruby Time instance for the time the post was last updated. |
post.content | The raw post content. Example use: `{{ post.content |
post.foo | The value of the Foo header, e.g., if Foo: my special header is in the source file, post.foo is my special header. All headers are merged into the {{ post }} variable for you to use in templates. |
These are available on individual post pages, in _template/post.html.
| Variable | Value |
|---|---|
post | The post being processed. See above for what values (post.url, ...) are available. |
prev_post | The post published chronologically before post. |
next_post | The post published chronologically after post. |
These are set when processing archive pages.
| Variable | Value |
|---|---|
month | The month for the archive page being rendered. This is a Ruby Date instance. |
posts | The list of posts for the month. Ordered by most-recently-published-first. |
archive_page | A flag set to true. |
./bin/serif {dev,admin,generate} to run Serif commands.rake test to run the tests.rake docs will generate HTML documentation in docs/. Open docs/index.html in a browser to start.lib/serif/ is generally where files go.spec/ contains the test files. Any new files should have require "spec_helper" at the top of the, which pulls in spec/test_helper.rb.See CHANGELOG.
Some things I'm hoping to implement one day:
FAQs
Unknown package
We found that serif demonstrated a not healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
Did you know?
Socket for GitHub automatically highlights issues in each pull request and monitors the health of all your open source dependencies. Discover the contents of your packages and block harmful activity before you install or update your dependencies.
Security News
In this segment of the Risky Business podcast, Feross Aboukhadijeh and Patrick Gray discuss the challenges of tracking malware discovered in open source softare.
Research
Security News
A threat actor's playbook for exploiting the npm ecosystem was exposed on the dark web, detailing how to build a blockchain-powered botnet.
Security News
NVD’s backlog surpasses 20,000 CVEs as analysis slows and NIST announces new system updates to address ongoing delays.