sitegen

SiteGen

Sitegen is a simple, flexible, and fast static site generator written in Go. It supports incremental builds, live reloading, and a powerful template system.

Features

• 🚀 Fast & Incremental: Builds only what's needed.
• 🔄 Live Reload: Built-in development server with changes detection.
• 🎨 Templating: Flexible Go templates with custom functions.
• 📝 Markdown: Write pages in .md with automatic HTML conversion.
• 📦 Zero Dependency: Single binary, easy to install.
• 🔧 File Handlers: Custom build commands for specific file types (e.g. CSS, JS).
• 🌐 Public Sharing: Instantly share your dev server via a public URL (like ngrok, built-in).

Installation

Install via alt — a zero-config CLI distribution proxy for GitHub Releases:

# Install alt (one-time setup)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/altlimit/alt/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

# Install sitegen
alt install altlimit/sitegen

Windows (PowerShell)

# Install alt (one-time setup)
powershell -Command "iwr https://raw.githubusercontent.com/altlimit/alt/main/scripts/install.ps1 -useb | iex"

# Install sitegen
alt install altlimit/sitegen

Or download binaries directly from the Releases Page.

Quick Start

1. Create a new project:

   mkdir my-website
   cd my-website
   sitegen -create
   

2. Start development server:

   sitegen -serve
   

   Open http://localhost:8888 in your browser.

3. Build for production:

   sitegen -clean -minify
   

Usage

sitegen [options]

Options:
  -create              Create a new site template
  -site <path>         Root site path (default: "./site")
  -serve               Start development server
  -port <port>         Port for development server (default: "8888")
  -clean               Clean public dir before build
  -minify              Minify HTML/JS/CSS output
  -public <dir>        Public output directory (default: "./public")
  -base <path>         Base URL path (default: "/")
  -share               Enable public sharing via sitegen.dev
  -share-auth <u:p>    Basic auth for share ("user:pass")
  -share-server <addr> Share relay server (default: "sitegen.dev:9443")
  -help                Show help

Template System

Sitegen uses Go's html/template with extra helper functions.

Functions

Page Variables

• .<key>: Any variable defined in YAML frontmatter is accessible directly at the root (e.g., .title). When iterating over sources (e.g. range sources), use .Meta.<key> on the source item instead.
• .Dev: Boolean, true if running in development mode.
• .Source: Current source object (.Source.Meta has the raw frontmatter map).
• .BasePath: Configured base path.
• .Today: Current date (YYYY-MM-DD).
• .Year: Current year (YYYY).
• .Path: Current page path (if parameterized).
• .Page, .Pages: Pagination info.
• .BuildID: Unix timestamp string, regenerated on every build (useful for cache busting).

Basic Example

src/about.html:

---
title: About Us
template: main.html
---

{{define "content"}}
  <h1>{{ .title }}</h1>
  <p>Welcome to our site!</p>
{{end}}

File Handlers

Customize how files are processed by adding a frontmatter block to any file (css, js, etc).

/*
---
serve: npm run build:css
build: npm run build:prod:css
---
*/

Public Sharing

Share your development server publicly with a single flag — no ngrok or third-party tunnels needed:

sitegen -serve -share

This creates a public URL like https://<id>.sitegen.dev that tunnels to your local dev server with hot reload support.

To require a password:

sitegen -serve -share -share-auth "admin:secret"

The share tunnel only serves static files from your public/ directory (GET/HEAD only) and reconnects automatically if the connection drops.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

License

MIT