NAME
Web::PerlDistSite - generate fairly flashy websites for CPAN distributions
DESCRIPTION
Basically a highly specialized static site generator.
Prerequisites
You will need cpanm.
You will need nodejs with npm.
You will need make.
Setup
Create a directory and copy the example Makefile and package.json files from this distribution into it. Then run make install
to install additional Nodejs and Perl dependencies.
Site Configuration
Configuration is via a file config.yaml. This is a YAML file containing a hash with the following keys. Each key is optional, unless noted as required. An example config.yaml is included in this distribution.
theme
(required)-
A hashref of colour codes. You need at least "primary", "secondary", "light", and "dark". "info", "success", "warning", and "danger" are also allowed.
theme: light: "#e4e3e1" dark: "#32201D" primary: "#763722" secondary: "#E4A042"
A good colour generator can be found at https://huemint.com/bootstrap-basic/ if you're stuck for ideas.
The
theme
hashref can also include Bootstrap's non-colour SASS options. See https://getbootstrap.com/docs/5.2/customize/options/.An example is:
theme: light: "#e4e3e1" dark: "#32201D" primary: "#763722" secondary: "#E4A042" "enable-shadows": "true"
name
(required)-
The name of the project you're building a website for. This is assumed to be a CPAN distribution name, like "Exporter-Tiny" or "Foo-Bar-Baz".
abstract
(required)-
A short plain-text summary of the project.
abstract_html
-
A short HTML summary of the project.
copyright
(required)-
A short plain-text copyright statement for the website footers.
github
-
Link to a GitHub repo for the site. Expected to be of the form "https://github.com/username/reponame".
issues
-
Link to an issue tracker.
sponsor
-
Hashref containing project sponsorship info. The "html" key is required. The "href" key is optional.
sponsor: html: "<strong>Please sponsor us!</strong> Blah blah blah." href: https://paypal.example/foo-bar-baz
-
A list of files to include in the navbar. If this key is missing, will be loaded from menu.yaml instead.
homepage
-
Hashref of options for the homepage (index.html). May contain keys "animation", "banner", "banner_fixation", "banner_position_x", and "banner_position_y".
The "animation" may be "waves1", "waves2", "swirl1", "attract1", or "circles1". Each of these will create a pretty animation on the homepage. Some day I'll add support for more animations.
If "animation" is not defined, then "banner" can be used to supply the URL of a static image to use instead of an animation.
"banner_fixation" can be "scroll" or "fixed", and defaults to the latter. "banner_position_x" can be "left", "center", or "right". "banner_position_y" can be "top", "center", or "bottom". These each default to "center".
"hero_options" is itself a hashref and allows various parts of the banner/animation to be overridden. In particular, "title" and "abstract".
homepage: animation: waves1 hero_options: title: "Blah" abstract: "Blah blah blah"
In the future, more homepage options may be available.
dist_dir
-
Directory for output. Defaults to a subdirectory called "docs".
root_url
-
URL for the output. Can be an absolute URL, but something like "/" is probably okay. (That's the default.)
codestyle
-
Name of a highlight.js theme, used for code syntax highlighting. Defaults to "github".
pod_filter
-
A list of section names which will be filtered out of pages generated from pod files. Uses "|" as a separator. Defaults to: "NAME|BUGS|AUTHOR|THANKS|COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE|DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES".
pod_titlecase
-
Boolean. Should ALL CAPS "=head1" headings from pod be converted to Title Case? Defaults to true.
pod_downgrade_headings
-
Converts pod "=head1" to
<h2>
tags in HTML, etc.
Menu Configuration
The menu can be configured under the menu
key of config.yaml, or in a separate file menu.yaml. This is a list of menu items. For example:
- name: installation
title: Installation
source: _pages/installation.md
- name: hints
title: Hints and Tips
source: _pages/hints.pod
- name: manual
title: Manual
children:
- name: Foo-Bar
pod: Foo::Bar
- name: Foo-Bar-Baz
pod: Foo::Bar::Baz
The name
key is used for the output filename. ".html" is automatically appended.
The title
key is the title of the document generated. It is used in the navbar and in the page's
element.title
Each entry needs a source
which is an input filename. The input may be pod or markdown. (At some future point, HTML input will also be supported.)
If the pod
key is found, we'll find the pod via @INC
, like perldoc does. This will helpfully also default title
and name
for you!
A children
key allows child pages to be listed. Only one level of nesting is supported in the navbar, but if further levels of nesting are used, these pages will still be built. (You'll just need to link to them manually somehow.)
A meta
key allows you to provide metadata for a page. It's an array of hashrefs. Each item in the array will result in a <meta content="">
or <link href="">
tag added to the document's <head>
. For example:
- name: installation
title: How to install
source: _pages/installation.html
meta:
- name: description
content: "How to install my module."
- rel: related
href: "https://videotube.example/1234"
title: "Watch a screen recording of module installation"
A list item like this can be used to add dividers:
- divider: true
If the input is pod, you can also provide pod_filter
, pod_titlecase
, and pod_downgrade_headings
settings which override the global settings.
If the input is markdown, you may use "----" (four hyphens) on a line by itself to divide the page into cute sections.
Homepage
You'll need a file called _pages/index.md for the site's homepage. The filename may be configurable some day.
Custom CSS
You can create a file called custom.scss containing custom SCSS code to override or add to the defaults.
Adding Images
If you create a directory called images, this will be copied to docs/assets/images/ during the build process. This should be used for things like background images, etc.
Building the Site
Running make all
will build the site.
Running make clean
will remove the docs
directory and also any temporary SCSS files created during the build process.
EXAMPLE
Example: https://github.com/exportertiny/exportertiny.github.io
Generated this site: https://exportertiny.github.io
More Examples
BUGS
Please report any bugs to https://github.com/tobyink/p5-web-perldistsite/issues.
AUTHOR
Toby Inkster <tobyink@cpan.org>.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE
This software is copyright (c) 2023 by Toby Inkster.
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES
THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.