Introduction

The md-site-engine is a tool to quickly build Node.js based web sites from markdown files. The engine is not appropriate for any web site, however, it is very usable for text dominated static sites. Web site building consists of two main steps: first you have to create a site skeleton, then you can produce the contents.

The web site skeleton is an HTML wrapper for the contents. It ensures that the engine generates valid HTML documents from the markdown content files. The skeleton is usually built from an HTML document wrapper called document file, one or more layout files that ensure the appearance of the web pages, some components to fill in the places on the web pages, and the usual web stuff - style sheets, scripts, images and other media files. In summary, the skeleton is compiled from standard web site files. Details can found in the Components section.

The contents consist of markdown files, or optionally HTML files. They are grouped by languages. The directory structure of the content files, and the metadata placed in the beginning of the files are used to generate menus automatically. The engine provides a simple way to search texts in the content files. For more information see the Content files section.

Some dynamic functionality can be added to the site using JavaScript files called controls, and simple data flows called actions can be executed, respectively. However, md-site-engine is not a programming framework. On the other hand, a md-site-engine application is based on Node.js, therefore it can be arbitrarily extended to include any required function.