JMDS.blog

JMDS puts MD in JS

Want to write content in Markdown? Can't be assed to set up Ruby? Or Python? Or npm? Download a go executable? Or whatever the newest static site generator uses?

The goal of JMDS is to simplfiy writing as much as possible while still allowing some level of flexbility over something like a basic GitHub Gist solution. There is no setup besides cloning, writing and pushing.

Steps to publish:

• add your Markdown file
• add an entry in the posts.json catalog
• push your wisdom into the world

Installation

Currently there is not much of an install besides cloning the repo and get going. Configuration is something for the future. And a bright future this will be.

1. clone with git clone [email protected]:musiKk/JMDS.blog.git
2. write a post in the posts directory
3. add an entry in the posts/posts.json file
4. (optional) customize the templates
5. publish to GitHub Pages

Customization

There is limited support for a custom menu. Menu items are defined in the configuration as follows:

{
    "pages": [
        {
            "name": "Posts",
            "template": "posts.html"
        },
        {
            "name": "About",
            "template": "about.html"
        },
        {
            "name": "My Projects",
            "template": "my-projects.md"
        },
        {
            "name": "Knowledge",
            "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org"
        }
    ]
}

The properties define the type of menu entry.

Templates

If the object contains a template property, it's refers to a template that is in the templates folder. If the template link ends in html, the page is rendered as is into the main page's content element. If the link ends in md, the page will be run through the Markdown processor first.

URLs

If the objct contains a url property, it's a link to an external site. The site will be opened in a new tab.

Posts

Posts are handled specially. They are split across two templates; both with an element of ID template-content respecitvely.

template	what's in template-content
templates/posts.html	the list of posts
posts/post.html	the content of the post

Posts are taken from the posts/posts.json file. Take a gander:

{
    "posts": [
        {
            "link": "2028-02-22-from-teh-future.md",
            "title": "Time travel is possible"
        }
    ]
}

The link is relative to the posts directory. I guess in theory this would allow subfolders but for now this is not possible. Maybe later. The title is only used for the post list. The link must be in the format YYYY-MM-DD-mah-title. This will be used for grouping. Everything from the current year is rendered into a "Recent posts" section. Post order is determined by the order in the posts.json file but this is just laziness and will change probably.

Index

The index is at the root in an index.html file. It needs elements with the following IDs:

ID	what for
header	links to templates are rendered here
content	templates are rendered here

The index has no restrictions except

• it needs an element with ID content; it will contain the content
• it has to load the js/blog.js script, duh

There is also a css/blog.css but I don't know CSS so it currently looks like shit. 🤷‍♂️

Credit

Credit where credit is due. JMDS is heavily inspired by CMS.js. But I suffer from NIH. Oh and ChatGPT of course.

• Box arrow up-right from Bootstrap under MIT license
• corresponding CSS snippet from Christian Oliff