Marmite

Marmite [Markdown makes sites] is a very! simple static site generator.

I'm a big user of other SSGs but it is frequently frustrating that it takes so much setup to get started.
Just having a directory of markdown files and running a single command sounds really useful.
— Michael, marmite user.

How it works

It does "one" simple thing only:

• Reads all .md files on the input directory.
• Using CommonMark parse it to HTML content.
• Extract optional metadata from frontmatter or filename.
• Generated html file for each page.
• Outputs the rendered static site to the output folder.

It also handles generating or copying static/ and media/ to the output dir.

Before you start, you should know

1. Marmite is meant to be simple, don't expect complex features
2. Marmite is for bloggers, so writing and publishing articles in chronological order is the main use case.
3. The generated static site is a flat HTML site, no subpaths, all content is published in extension ending URLS ex: ./{name}.html|rss|json
4. There are only 2 taxonomies tags: (to group similar content together) and stream: (to separate content in a different listing)
5. Marmite uses the date: attribute to differentiate posts from pages

Features

• Everything embedded in a single binary.

• Zero-Config to get started.

  • optionally fully configurable

• Common-mark + Github Flavoured Markdown + Extensions.

• Raw HTML allowed.

• Emojis :smile:, spoiler ||secret||.

• Wikilinks [[name|url]] and Obsidian links [[page]].

• Backlinks.

• Tags.

• Multi authors.

  • Author profile page

• Multi streams.

  • Separate content in different listing

• Pagination.

• Static Search Index.

• RSS Feeds.

  • Multiple feeds (index, tags, authors, streams)

• Built-in HTTP server.

• Auto rebuild when content changes.

• Built-in theme

  • Light and Dark modes.
  • Multiple colorschemes
  • Fully responsive
  • Spotlight Search.
  • Easy to replace the index page and add custom CSS/JS
  • Easy to customize the templates
  • Math and Mermaid diagrams.
  • Syntax Highlight.
  • Commenting system integration.
  • Banner images and og: tags.

• CLI to start a new theme from scratch

Installation

Install with cargo

cargo binstall marmite

or

cargo install marmite

Or download the pre-built binary from the releases

Alternative installation methods

brew install marmite

yay -S marmite-bin

pkg install marmite

$ docker run -v $PWD:/input ghcr.io/rochacbruno/marmite
Site generated at: site/

$ docker run -p 8000:8000 -v $PWD:/input ghcr.io/rochacbruno/marmite --serve

Usage

It's simple, really!

$ marmite folder_with_markdown_files path_to_generated_site
Site generated at path_to_generated_site/

CLI

❯ marmite --help
Marmite is the easiest static site generator.

Usage: marmite [OPTIONS] <INPUT_FOLDER> <OUTPUT_FOLDER>

Arguments:
  <INPUT_FOLDER>   Input folder containing markdown files
  <OUTPUT_FOLDER>  Output folder to generate the site

Options:
      --serve            Serve the site with a built-in HTTP server
      --watch            Detect changes and rebuild the site automatically
      --bind <BIND>      Address to bind the server [default: localhost:8000]
      --config <CONFIG>  Path to custom configuration file [default: marmite.yaml]
      --debug            Print debug messages Deprecated: Use -vv for debug messages
      --init-templates   Initialize templates in the project
      --start-theme      Initialize a theme with templates and static assets
      --generate-config  Generate the configuration file
  -v, --verbose...       Verbosity level (0-4) [default: 0 warn] options: -v: info,-vv: debug,-vvv: trace,-vvvv: trace all
  -h, --help             Print help
  -V, --version          Print version

Live reload in development

When running with --serve --watch, Marmite exposes a WebSocket-based live reload helper. Add this snippet to your base template so the browser refreshes after each rebuild:

<script src="/__marmite__/livereload.js"></script>

Getting started

Read a tutorial on how to get started https://marmite.blog/getting-started.html and create your blog in minutes.

Docs

Read more on how to customize templates, add comments etc on https://marmite.blog/

That's all!

Marmite is very simple.

If this simplicity does not suit your needs, there are other awesome static site generators.

Here are some that I recommend:

• Cobalt
• Zola
• Zine