c-ssg

A very opinionated and minimal static site generator written in C.

c-ssg takes a directory of Markdown files and generates a complete static website with a shared navigation bar, nested sections, and plain HTML output. It is super lightweight and built using standard POSIX interfaces.

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Features

• Markdown to HTML conversion
• Automatic navigation bar generation
• Image support
• Video support
• Nested documentation support through folders
• Shared CSS across every generated page
• Bottom bar
• Front matter metadata support
• Lightmode/Darkmode Theme Switcher

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Project Structure

.
├── src/                # Source code
├── site-imgs/          # Your site images
    ├── img1.png
    ├── img2.png
├── markdowns/          # Your markdown files
│   ├── index.md
│   ├── about.md
│   └── guides/
│       ├── install.md
│       └── usage.md
├── cssfiles/           # Your global css files
    ├── styles.css
├── htmlfiles/          # Generated HTML and CSS
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── about.html
│   ├── guides.html
│   ├── guides__install.html
│   └── guides__usage.html

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How it Works

Every Markdown file placed directly inside markdowns/ becomes its own page.

For example,

markdowns/
├── index.md
├── about.md
└── contact.md

generates

Home | About | Contact

in the navigation bar.

Folders inside markdowns/ become navigation entries themselves.

For example,

markdowns/
├── index.md
└── guides/
    ├── installation.md
    ├── configuration.md
    └── deployment.md

generates a navigation bar like

Home | Guides

Clicking Guides opens a page containing links to

• Installation
• Configuration
• Deployment

Each Markdown file inside the folder is also converted into its own HTML page.

Images

To insert images into any of the websites, you will have to store the image in the site-imgs directory with a unique name and insert the image in the markdown file in the following format :

~img=<image name>~

For example, to insert an image of a cat, file name being cat.png, edit the markdown file to contain:

~img=cat.png

Save the cat.png file in the site-imgs directory.

Videos

Videos insertion follow the same syntax as images.

~vid=cat.mp4~

Save the cat.mp4 file in the site-imgs directory as well.

Metadata

To change the metadata of every html page, such as title, date, etc., the following frontmatter metadata format should be used in the markdown files.

---
title: <pagetitle>
tags: <tag1>, <tag2>, <tag3>
---
Your markdown content

As of now, there is only support for the website's title tag and tags for the markdown files inside the nested directory in /markdowns, more keys are planned in the future.

Note

To change the bottom bar, edit the main.c file's #define HTML_BOILERPLATE_ENDING to change or include whatever footer elements you might need.

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Supported Markdown

Current support includes:

• Headings (# through ######)
• Paragraphs
• Unordered lists
• Bold
• Italic
• code blocks
• Links
• Checkboxes

• Block Quotes

• Line Breaks

More syntax is planned.

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Building

Build using the included makefile.

make

Run the generator:

./c-ssg

Generated files will appear inside htmlfiles/.

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Customization

The generated pages all share the same stylesheet.

cssfiles/styles.css

Editing this file changes the appearance of the entire website.

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Todo

• Code blocks
• Single line code blocks
• Syntax Highlighting (metadata option)
• Images
• Page titles
• More metadata support
• Searchable and filterable tags (from frontmatter)
• Extend tags frontmatter to different metadata keys.
• Checkboxes
• Links
• Blockquotes
• Ordered lists
• Tables
• Better Markdown compatibility (in list markdown)

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License

MIT