Makko Basics

I decided to keep this around for funsies.

Makko is the markdown-based, people-oriented static site generator, that allows you to setup your dream blog in a matter of minutes: no complicated theming systems, no coding, little to no setup, simple to learn and understand, all of that under a specially tiny package, a portable binary you can run on pretty much anything.

Of course, if you already downloaded this program, we don't need to sell it to ya anymore, do we? so let's give you a rundown of some of it's features!

Markdown

Makko uses the awesome md4c library for its Markdown parsing and HTML generation, it's pretty swell and it supports a bunch of awesome features, being pretty much on par with github's markdown generation, being mostly commonmark with some extra stuff you might like.

Take a look at this awful example:

Markdown is pretty powerful, it's a way on which you can describe things like these pretty nicely, without really needing to know how to code or bear with HTML's tag insanity for quickly writing down your ideas. If you have used Discord, or Github before, you most probably already know its syntax!

Mustache

Makko implements the mustache templating system, it's a pretty easy way to do templates and create structure 'round here.

If you open a makko.json file, you'll notice something like this:

"custom": {
  "greeting": "'ello world :)"
}

If we then, have a template or a blog post that has the following:

My greeting: 

The result would be:

<p>My greeting: 'ello world :)</p>

The way that makko contructs its "feeds" (ex. the index page) and the output posts, is to have some files that act as the blueprints for the site and how everything must look, these are stored in templates/, which then are filled up with the info you pass to makko through each post file.

Let's decentralize!

Makko automatically generates a bunch of "feeds" for different "syndication protocols," like RSS, JSONFeed, and Atom. If you're not familiar with these, they let people "subscribe" to your blog without needing to rely on big tech or third parties.

As long as someone has an RSS reader, JSONFeed reader or an Atom reader, they can get updates whenever you post!

Live server

Tired of hosting a separate server just to preview your website, and having to reload the page after every single change? We've got a solution for you.

Introducing the live server! Just run makko with the --live argument.

Go ahead, try it! It'll give you an IP address you can connect to. This is local to you only, and you can open it in your browser of choice.

Try editing this same line while it's running, and watch how it automatically updates in your browser once you save the file.

Want to check out your site on your phone or tablet? Add the --public flag alongside --live, and Makko will give you a QR code you can scan to open the website from any device on the same network. It's pretty handy!

It's efficient!

Makko uses very little system requirements. Like. A miniscule amount. So little, you will almost certainly not notice unless you're trying to run it on a graphing calculator.

The end.

Hey, thanks for reading all of this!

Since you like reading so much, why not check out the documentation, too? Maybe you want to see our other projects?

Or maybe, just maybe, you're stalling and should probably start making things already!

Thanks for reading, see ya on the flip side!