Introducing Page, a website generator

Do you have a static gemini website that you just wish was a static http website? run `page` on your gemini directory and see `page_html` emerge, rsync both to your static host and you're done!

Page is available for free on SourceHut™

If you're on mac you can install easily with:

How we got here.

I've gone through many variations of how I host my personal website, and since the apocalyptic year of 2012[1] I've been using jekyll to build it and nginx to serve it.

[1] in 2012 this sounded like a good idea, but go ask nasa why i kept this going for 10 more years.

A couple of years ago, while learning how to use pulumi[2] and aws, I decided to migrate all of my personal infrastructure to s3 + cloudfront. While this was satisfying and edifying, it ended up being too much complexity for what now amounted to a bunch of html files with a shared layout.

[2] pulumi, like terraform but nicer

More recently than that, I discovered the joy of gemini[3] and started maintaining my website as a capsule instead. In fact, I spent more time tending to the gemtext than the htmls, so it seemed even worse to have to go back, update some HTMLs, sync the bucket, invalidate the cloudfront cache, ew.

[3] gemini, like http but nicer

[3b] if you're not already seeing this page in gemini, check it out.

With all that going on, I decided it was time to let jekyll rest, learn some rust, and build a static site generator that takes a bunch of gmi files and a layout to create my website. After a few days of trial and error, here we are.

What happens next?

Well, the odd one out is now my blog generator. So i'm pretty sure the next step will be to also replace blog with a rustier version that does much less. If it does come to that, you can read all about it in your favorite online publication: this here gemlog.