bloggen static site generator

Keywords: static site generator, list post, jupyter notebooks, html file, directory, bloggen, javascript, tf, language, idf. Powered by TextRank.

bloggen is a static site generator.

There are countless static site generators available—so many, in fact, that there's an entire site dedicated to enumerating and comparing them. Yet, I decided to build another one for myself. Why? Mainly because it's fun and because a static site generator is a tool I use frequently, and I want total control over how it works.

Bloggen is a simple piece of software. Here's what it does with a source directory:

• Scans the directory for Markdown files
• Scans the directory for Jupyter Notebooks (.ipynb files)
• Uses SideMark to parse the files and render them as HTML
• Renders Jupyter Notebooks on the client-side using notebookjs
• Creates an RSS file
• Generates an index.html file
• Produces an Apache config file to limit access to protected posts
• Processes the frontmatter of each post to handle metadata (e.g., skipping drafts, sticky posts, language indicator, timestamping posts, etc.)
• Uses a TF/IDF matching engine to list posts that are potentially similar to the current post
• Applies TextRank to extract keywords from each post
• Generates a list of outgoing links from each post

There's no theme support because such features tend to be distractions. I aim for the simplest possible layout and appearance. As a result, sites generated by Bloggen resemble an old-school mailing list archive. The only styling is a lightweight CSS file that adjusts margins based on screen size, ensuring readability on mobile devices. For posts that use KaTeX or Jupyter Notebooks, external JavaScript libraries are included on demand. Beyond that, there's no JavaScript at all.

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First published on 2025-06-01 ~ 2026-03-21

Generated on 22 Mar 2026 at 11:50 PM

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