About

Clay generates static pages using layouts and text snippets. It is something like a CMS for those who know html and would like to use their own text editor. Clay was inspired by jekyll which is a simple tool to create a blog. The difference between clay and jekyll is that clay aims at a clear folder structure and simple templating using mustache.

There are plans for adding a blogging support in clay too.

Getting started

  • Start by installing the gem gem install clay
  • Init your project using clay clay init
  • Create layouts/default.html in the project directory with the following content: {title} {{content}}
  • Create pages/index.html in the project directory --- title: Home ---

    Hello from clay

  • run clay form && clay run
  • Preview Your site on http://localhost:9292 or publish it via FTP. When publishing, You should take only the files in the build folder

Howto

In your project directory You will find following subdirectories

  • layouts
  • pages
  • static
  • texts

The layouts directory is for the global layouts of your pages. There must be a layout called default.html

In the pages directory You create each page You want to have. The pages are created in html or markdown. The filename of an html page must be .html Markdown pages however can be either .md or .markdown

NOTE Your pages may have any names You want. However given your domain name is foo.com, and You want that the main page shows up at http://foo.com You will have to create page named index in the pages directory

The static files like css stylesheets, javascript files and images/videos all should be placed in the static folder.

The texts is a directory, in which You can create the texts with images, which will then be available to the layouts and the pages. A text file in texts directory must be written in markdown and have the extension of either .md or .markdown in order to be used. You can then use any text with filename some-article.md as {{text-some-article}} in Your pages. Please note, that in pages or layouts You should do a tripple brackets, otherwise the tags will be escaped and You will see html instead of nice formatted text.

Configurations

Clay can be configured to behave specifically to Your development needs. To use this, You can create config.yaml in your project directory with following options:

  • autoreload: true|false - This option will autoreload Your site, when you run it via clay run and something changes in pages, layouts, texts or static files. This way You can just update the files and immediately see the changes when You reload the page. This is very useful for the page development or when You write some text and want to see how does it actually look like on the page.

  • target_dir: <custom/target/directory> - This option makes clay generate the site into a specific location. For example a pubic directory. This directory can be then served by a webserver. This way one can install clay on a remote server and update the site on the fly. It also provides more flexibility in choosing the place of output. Please make sure, that the target is writable.

Licence

Clay by Pavlo Kerestey is licensed under a MIT Licence. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://kerestey.net.

Full text of the licence

Copyright (C) 2011 by Pavlo Kerestey

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.