101 lines
4.1 KiB
Markdown
101 lines
4.1 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Building My Own Static Site Generator
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date: 2025-07-10
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draft: true
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---
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*[SSG]: Static Site Generator
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[homebrewed]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrewing
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[zona]: https://sr.ht/~ficd/zona
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[Hugo]: https://gohugo.io/
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[Zola]: https://www.getzola.org/
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[Jekyll]: https://jekyllrb.com/
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[Zoner]: https://zone-builder.neocities.org/
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[Zonelets]: https://zonelets.net/
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[Neocities]: https://neocities.org
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[^jd]: [jdugan6240.dev](https://jdugan6240.dev/posts/custom_site_generator.html#why)
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[^long-sentence]: I disabled the "long sentences" linter in my grammar
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checker. Take that for being unapologetic!
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[^small-web]: The "small web" is a way to collectively refer to
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independent, home-made, personal websites --- often with a focus on
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creativity, anti-capitalism, and technology.
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Those of us in the open-source world tend to be very _passionate_ about
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what we do — and passion often manifests itself in _blogging_. Rolling
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your own blogging setup seems to be a rite of passage. It's a project of
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moderate complexity, fun, and not particularly time-consuming.
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Personal websites and blogs are very... personal. Why not maximize the
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control we have over them? Many of the programmers I respect publish blogs
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using a [homebrewed] SSG. I figured it was time to join them!
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This article is about how (and why) I built [zona], the SSG that built and
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rendered the blog post you're reading. Without any further ado, let's get
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into it!
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[TOC]
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## Zonelets & Zoner
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I don't remember how I found out about the small web,[^small-web], but I
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_do_ recall how it immediately sparked something in me. As an autist with
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very particular interests that's always struggled to fit in, the premise
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of having my very own corner of the internet where I could
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unapologetically be myself without fear of retribution from rude
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social-media commenters or being subject to the whims of some grumpy
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content moderator was _very_ appealing to me.[^long-sentence]
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## Reinventing The Wheel
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There's no shortage of excellent SSG tools out there. [Hugo] is fast,
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configurable, and very popular. [Jekyll] is the default on GitHub pages,
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which makes it _(I'm guessing)_ the most commonly-used SSG by a long shot.
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[Zola] is tiny, dependency free, and _very_ flexible.
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You can certainly build some awesome blogs with these tools, and customize
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them as much as you want. For example, my friend Alisa uses [Zola] to
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publish [her blog](https://axlefublr.github.io/), which is a great example
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of how a minimal website can truly shine with the right styling and
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customization.
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So: if there's such an abundance of great static site generators, why did
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I write my own? JD[^jd], a fellow Kakoune enjoyer, puts it well:
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> 1. It's a good learning experience \[...\]
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> 2. Many static site generators are complex and take time to learn to
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> configure \[...\]
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> 3. A custom solution grants complete control over how exactly the site
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> is generated \[...\]
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My main motivation for starting work on [zona] was the third point:
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**complete control**. I don't think being a control freak makes me an
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outlier among Linux users — why else would we be breaking our operating
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system near-daily, if not for some obsessive customization?
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It's happened very often that I find some tool I like, and during the
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process of tweaking it, I find _something_ that can't be changed --- which
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ends up bothering me immensely. I figured that I'd rather avoid this
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experience while writing my own blog. This way, if something is missing,
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it's my fault, and no one else's.
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## Requirements
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The features I implemented in [zona] are informed by what I want from my
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own blog. The primary user is myself, after all! I knew I wanted:
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- Writing in Markdown with as little embedded HTML as possible.
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- A convenient live preview.
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- An easy way to write image captions.
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- Control over the Markdown parsing.
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- Declarative configuration.
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- An easy way to add new posts.
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## Snakes Eating Gophers: A Valiant First Attempt
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I started work on [zona] in October, 2024. At this point, I had written a
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few (smaller) projects in Go, and I wanted to work on something more
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complicated to learn the language better.
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