Title: Demonstrating Pelican, a static site generator
Latex:
Date: 2013-06-13 9:33
Category: Coding
Tags: foss, software, webdev
Slug: pelican-demo
Author: Terri Yu
When I was setting up this blog, I initially started with
[Wordpress](http://wordpress.org/), but then I discovered that many (tech-savvy)
people were using static site generators.
It took me some time to understand what that meant. Most of the common
blogging platforms generate websites dynamically. Wordpress requires SQL to
manage a database containing your blog content. When someone loads your blog
URL, Wordpress generates the requested webpage. Wordpress must be installed on
your webhost/server for this to work.
The idea behind static site generators is to have software on your local
machine that creates webpages and then upload these pages to the webhost. The
webpages have fixed content, hence the description "static site." You don't
need to install anything on the webhost.
For a small personal blog, a static site makes a lot of sense because you
+ Avoid the security issues of having software (like Wordpress) installed on
your webhost
+ Don't need to worry about upgrading and maintaining server-side software
(like Wordpress)
+ Can write blog posts in some type of markdown, which is a lot more user
friendly than composing posts in a browser GUI[^1]
+ Can exercise version control on the static web content
+ Can easily move your website somewhere else because your website is just a
bunch of static files
In practice, I wanted my blog to have the following features:
+ Ability to write posts in markdown
+ Footnotes
+ Syntax highlighting, especially for code
+ Ability to render $\LaTeX$
I can show that all of that is possible in
[Pelican](http://docs.getpelican.com), a static site generator written in
Python. (Needless to say, I'm using Pelican[^2] for this blog.)
Markdown
--------
### Emphasis
This is *extremely* **important**.
### Lists
Some things I'd like to do someday
+ Skate the canals in the Netherlands
+ Build my own computer
+ Write my own software project
+ Finish *Baldur's Gate*
+ Publish an essay
Top 5 console games
1. Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door (Gamecube)
2. Prince of Persia trilogy (The Sands of Time, Warrior Within, The Two Thrones) (console/PC)
3. Chrono Trigger (SNES/DS)
4. Phoenix Wright series (GBA/DS)
5. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Gamecube/Wii)
### Blockquote
Some quotes I like:
Literary
> Having to read a footnote resembles having to go downstairs to answer the
> door while in the midst of making love.[^3]
Self-reliance
> A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher
> a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts,
> build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders,
> cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure,
> program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
> Specialization is for insects.[^4]
### Images
Who can resist cute cats? (Yes, that is my photo and those are our cats.)
### Horizontal rule
- - - - -
Syntax highlighting
-------------------
### Inline highlighting
Some Python keywords are `lambda`, `import`, and `while`.
### Block of code
:::python
def factorial(n):
if n == 0:
return 1
else:
return n * factorial(n-1)
- - - - -
$\LaTeX$ symbols
----------------
### Inline LaTeX symbols
I *always* seem to run out of Greek letters like $\alpha, \beta, \gamma$.
### {equation} environment
$$
\begin{equation}
i\hbar\frac{\partial}{\partial t}\Psi = \hat{H}\Psi
\end{equation}
$$
### {eqnarray} environment
Do you know what these equations are?
$$
\begin{eqnarray}
\nabla \cdot \vec{E} &=& 4\pi\rho \\\
\nabla \cdot \vec{B} &=& 0 \\\
\nabla \times \vec{E} &=& -\frac{1}{c}\frac{\partial \vec{B}}{\partial t} \\\
\nabla \times \vec{B} &=& \frac{1}{c}\left(4\pi\vec{J} + \frac{\partial \vec{E}}{\partial t}\right)
\end{eqnarray}
$$
The famous Maxwell's Equations[^5] describing electrodynamics in a vacuum!
For the eqnarray environment, I noticed that I had to use `\\\` instead of `\\`
for the line breaks.
Source
------
The Markdown file used to generate this post is available
[here](|filename|/code/pelican-demo.txt). I had to change the `.md` extension
to `.txt` to avoid confusing the Pelican compiler.
[^1]: I used to write my blog posts in HTML, in the blogging software's GUI. I
constantly fought the software reformatting my edits and changing the
whitespace.
[^2]: Top image taken from
[Pelican documentation page](http://docs.getpelican.com/en/latest/)
[^3]: Attributed to Noel Coward
[^4]: From *Time Enough to Love* by Robert Heinlein
[^5]: In cgs units, of course!
