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Maverick is a static blog generator built with python. Like Hexo and Jekyll, it takes Markdown (.md
) files as input, and output beautifully formated and well structured website pages (.html
). It has a bunch of built-in useful features (feed, search, sitemap, etc.), with extended Markdown syntax and enhanced image processing pipeline.
If you are tired of intricate plugins and complicated configurations, just give Maverick a try. You can focus on writing, let Maverick take care of the rest.
Pull requests are surely welcome. If you have any questions or suggestions, please head to issue area and leave us a message. Before that, let's finish this document.
Maverick is built with modern Python, currently at least Python 3.5 is required, make sure you have it installed on your machine.
Clone this repository:
git clone https://github.com/AlanDecode/Maverick.git ./Maverick && cd ./Maverick
Install dependencies:
pip install -r prod_req.txt
If error occurs, please verify your Python and pip version. Then edit the default configuration file:
vi ./config.py
For now let's use the default settings. Type this command in your terminal:
python ./build.py
...and a sample static site is generated in test_dist
folder! You can then upload them to GitHub Pages or any other server.
By default, Maverick searches all .md
files recursively under test_src
folder, so put your Markdown files in it and run python ./build.py
then everything you need will be in test_dist
folder. Maverick uses so-called YAML frontmatter
to get meta data of your articles, if you have tried Hexo or Jekyll, you should already be familiar with it; if you don't, let's look into it now.
In Maverick, arrangement of your source article files is not important, you can arrange them by category, date or anything you like, Maverick will try to find them automatically.
Instead, frontmatter
of each Markdown file tells Maverick its slug, category, tags and publish date, etc. frontmatter
is a short piece of text on top of each Markdown file, like this:
---
layout: post
title: A interesting story
slug: a-interesting-story
date: 2019-12-11 16:08
status: publish
author: AlanDecode
categories:
- Daily
tags:
- Travel
- Family
---
<!-- Your content here -->
frontmatter
starts and ends with ---
, it stores information as key: value
pair. All available options are listed bellow:
Key | Required | Default Value | Possible Value | Explanation |
---|---|---|---|---|
layout |
false | post | post, page | Type of this article. |
title |
true | - | - | The of this article |
slug |
true | title |
- | Maverick uses this value to generate URL of this article. For example: https://me.com/archives/a-interesting-story . |
date |
true | - | - | Publish date of this article in yyyy-mm-dd hh:ss format. |
status |
false | publish | publish, hidden, draft | Status of this article. |
author |
false | - | - | Author of this article. |
excerpt |
false | - | - | Will be used as excerpt of this article in home page and HTML head tag. If not set, Maverick will try to find <!--more--> and use content before as excerpt. If still not found, the first paragraph will be used. |
showfull |
false | false | true, false | If set to true , full content will show in home page. |
comment |
false | false | true, false | Turn on comment for this article. See how to enable comment in Comment section. |
tags |
false | - | - | Tags of this article. If there are multiple tags, write them as above. Don't forget spaces before and after - . |
categories |
false | - | - | Categories of this article. If there are multiple categories, write them as above. Don't forget spaces before and after - |
I suggest you keep a copy of sample articles come with Maverick as a reference to these options.
Although Maverick is much simpler than many other generators, it does have a few configurations you need to take care of, which you can modify in config.py
. All these options are listed bellow.
Option | Default Value | Explanation |
---|---|---|
site_prefix |
"/" |
This value will be used to generate permalinks of your posts. Possible values are like https://myblog.com/ or https://me.com/blog/ or just /blog/ . If you want to put your site under sub directory, this option can be useful. Don't forget / at the end. |
source_dir |
"./test_src/" |
A directory in which Maverick will try to find your articles. This can be any location on your machine, so feel free to store your articles in Dropbox, iCloud Drive or anywhere else to get them synced across multiple devices. |
build_dir |
"./test_dist/" |
Where Maverick should place all generated HTML files. This can be any location on your machine, just make sure you have write permission on it. |
template |
"Galileo" |
Specify the template to render your site. Please refer to Themes for more details. |
index_page_size |
10 |
The number of posts to show per page, change it to any number you like. |
archives_page_size |
30 |
The number of posts to show per page in archive list, category list and tag list. |
fetch_remote_imgs |
False |
Specify how Maverick will take care of your images. Please refer to Images and Static Assets for more details. |
locale |
Asia/Shanghai |
Specify where you are. Valid options are listed here. |
enable_jsdelivr |
{ "enabled": False, "repo": "" } |
If you host your site on GitHub Pages, this option can enable jsDelivr as CDN service for all your static files, including JS files, CSS files and images. See config.py and preview site for an example. Basically, set "enabled" to True and set "repo" to <user>/<repo>@<branch> . |
category_by_folder |
False |
Category contents by folder structure rather than front-matter. |
Option | Default Value | Explanation |
---|---|---|
site_name |
"Hellow Maverick!" |
Website name. Change it to something really cool! |
site_logo |
- | Website logo. Better be a square image. |
site_build_date |
"2019-12-06T12:00+08:00" |
When you build this site. |
author |
- | Author's name. |
email |
- | Author's email. |
author_homepage |
"/" |
Author's homepage. |
description |
"A marvelous site powered by Maverick!" |
Description of your site. |
keywords |
- | Four or five keywords about your site. |
external_links |
- | Will be used in Links section on home page. |
nav |
- | Will be used to generate navigations behind site title. |
social_links |
- | Will be used to generate social links behind site title. |
valine |
- | Maverick now supports Valine as its comment system. Please refer to Comments for more information. |
head_addon |
- | Content here will be added to <head> tag of generated HTMLs, you can put some meta tag here, or use <link> and <script> to import custom CSS and JavaScript files. |
footer_addon |
- | Content here will be added to <footer> tag. You can add some additional info here. |
body_addon |
- | Content here will be added to <body> tag, external JavaScripts and can be put here. |
language |
"english" |
Site language. |
background_img |
- | Background image for your site. Better be light-colored. |
💡 Note: You can access other options by ${option_name}
. For example ${site_prefix}logo.png
will be parsed as /logo.png
if you set site_prefix
to /
. When using this feature, watch out for infinite loops.
💡 Note: You can use ${static_prefix}
instead of ${site_prefix}
to reference static files, if you enabled jsDelivr as CDN service.
💡 Note: you can also use configuration file other than config.py
, just specify it when build:
python ./build.py -c "./my_conf.py"
# or
python ./build.py --config "./my_conf.py"
Maverick is a flexible generator, it does not require you to put your files in some fixed location, instead, by setting source_dir
, it automatically detects all source files to build your site. But what about images and other static assets like fonts or others? Well, Maverick has its own rule to solve this problem.
If there is a folder named static
under source_dir
, Maverick will copy all contents in that folder to build_dir
. For example, if a source_dir
looks like this:
source_dir/
- static/
- favicon.ico
- robots.txt
- font/
- ...
The result will be like this:
build_dir/
- favicon.ico
- robots.txt
- fonts/
Simple, right?
You can of course put all your images under static
folder, however, Maverick is designed to handle images very smartly. In fact, you can put your images anywhere on your machine, or insert remote images by URL in your Markdown file, when generating your static site, Maverick will try to gather them all together, putting them into a unified position and taking care of the links in your article in the same time.
In this way, you can freely manage your images with any online services you like, or just save them locally on your machine and reference them by relative or absolute path in your article. Many Markdown editors (like the awesome Typora) support inserting local images and can display them properly. This enables real-WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). For example, if you have a folder structure like this:
source_dir/
- assets/
- pic.jpg
- article.md
In article.md
, you insert pic.jpg
like bellow:
![](./assets/pic.jpg)
When parsing article.md
, Maverick will try to find ./assets/pic.jpg
on your machine, once been found, Maverick copies it to build_dir/archives/asstes/
, and then change the link in article.md
.
Here is one more reason why Maverick is designed this way. In many cases, for example, light-box and photo arrangements on web pages requires predefined image dimensions. Instead of fetching size information at front-end, parsing size information at building stage can dramatically improve the experience. Besides, this design can enable jsDelivr as CDN service for all your images.
It's special for remote images though. We can't easily get size information of them, so Maverick can try to download remote images to local disk and treat them as local images, this feature is disabled by default, you can turn it on by setting fetch_remote_imgs
to True
in configuration file. If you don't want to download full images to, just leave fetch_remote_imgs
as False
, Maverick will try to get the size of the image by downloading very small part of it (in most cases only 1~2 KB is needed).
All remote images and size information are cached locally, so Maverick won't download and parse them during every generation.
Maverick uses mistune 0.8.4 as its back-bone Markdown parser, with some extending.
You can insert math equations with like this:
# inline math
$m\times n$
## block math
$$C_{m\times k}=A_{m\times n}\cdot B_{n\times k}$$
Just specify the language when inserting code block with markdown syntax, and it will automatically be highlighted:
```cpp
int main(int argc , char** argv){
std::cout << "Hello World!\n";
return 0;
}
```
Type something like this:
I am {{Darth Vader:Your Father}}!
And it will be rendered as: I am Darth Vader!
Type something like this:
[Name](link)+(image URL)
It will be rendered as a link card with a images and a title.
Insert inline Footnotes like this:
Maverick is a staic blog generator[^Built with Python.].
Thanks to DPlayer, you can easily insert beautiful video player into your posts:
[dplayer]https://path/to/veideo.mp4[/dplayer]
You can add more options to it like this:
[dplayer data-theme="#b7daff"]https://path/to/video.mp4[/dplayer]
Checkout more options here.
Maverick has two built-in themes, Galileo and Kepler. You can easily switch between theme by setting template
entry in config.py:
template = 'Galileo' # or 'Kepler'
For third-party themes, there are three ways to use them.
-
Put third-party theme under
Templates
folder, and settemplate
in config.py to theme name. For example, if you have such folder structure:Templates/ __init__.py MyTheme/ __init__.py
Then you need to set
template
in config.py as:template = "MyTheme"
-
Put third-party theme under any local folder, and set
template
in config.py accordingly. For example, if you have such folder structure:/some/path/to/MyTheme/ __init__.py
Then you need to set
template
in config.py as:template = { "name": "MyTheme", "type": "local", "path": "/some/path/to/MyTheme/" # could also use relatetive path to Maverick }
-
Install theme from remote Git repository. If the theme is open sourced by Git, you can configure Maverick to use it directly. For example, you can also use
Kepler
theme like this:template = { "name": "Kepler", "type": "git", "url": "https://github.com/AlanDecode/Maverick-Theme-Kepler.git", "branch": "latest" }
Please consult theme provider on install details.
Maverick has built-in Valine support, please refer to Valine Docs for more information. You need to fill valine
entry in configuration file with at least these options:
valine = {
"enable": True,
"el": '#vcomments',
"appId": "<your appId here>",
"appKey": "<your appKey here>",
}
Pull requests are surely welcome. See theme-Dev.md for documentation on developing a theme for Maverick.
Thank Typlog for their wonderful work on extended Markdown image syntax.
MIT © AlanDecode.