bylexus / pcms

pcms - the Programmer's CMS

pcms - The Programmer's Content Management System

This project, historically called pcms, is a static site builder and web server written in GO.

I don't need a fancy, UI-driven CMS. I don't WANT a UI, and I don't want a CMS that is in my way of doing things. A CMS is too restrictive. I don't fear writing HTML and program code. I am a developer, at last, so I feel more comfortable writing code in an editor than clicking in a UI.

This is the idea behind pcms, the Programmer's CMS: A clutter-free, code-centric, simple static site builder and server to deliver web sites. For people that love to code, and just want things done.

Why "CMS"?

The name pcms, a "Programmer's Content Management System" is rooted in the early days of the project: At the beginning, the idea was to build a content management system to deliver content from a DB / dynamically instead of building static websites. Thus the name.

The project was re-written multiple times in multiple langauges, and I only realized over time that I ALSO don't need a CMS at all, but really just a static site builder. But then it was too late, the name has already burned in :-)

Features

• Static site builder: Builds static HTML from html templates, Markdown templates, scss/sass.
• Uses pongo2 template engine, a django-like template engine for html/markdown files to create pages based on templates
• Uses Dart Sass to create CSS from scss files
• Built-in Web-Server for deliver the page as web site
• Single-binary: The whole tool including documentation and a skeleton project is included in the single pcms binary. No other requirements.

Project Status

A first viable product is already available - All features to drive a full, real website are implemented. The first production site is already using pcms: https://alexi.ch/ is driven by the actual pcms version.

Still, this is an early stage, and changes have to be expected.

Quick Start

A getting started guide can be found in the documentation - see doc/site/quickstart/index.md, or check it out online: https://pcms.alexi.ch/quickstart

For the even more impatient:

# build PMCS (golang / go tools needed)
$ make build

# create a new site:
$ bin/pcms init path/to/site/

# serve it at localhost:3000
$ cd path/to/site/
$ bin/pcms serve

# read the doc at localhost:8888
$ bin/pcms serve-doc -listen :8888