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singlemd

Make a website with just a single Markdown file

Motivation

There are many, many, many solutions to create a static website but I’ve found that the overall setup, development, deployment to be overboard for just a simple site.
I also didn’t want to write HTML when most of my content could be done in Markdown. I liked the simplicity of writing a README file.

why can’t a README just be my website.

Install

npm install singlemd

Usage

This command reads README.md and writes the converted html into index.html

singlemd --input ./README.md --output index.html

If you want to add an optional css file. The contents will be appended to the <head> in a <style> tag.

singlemd --input ./README.md --output index.html --style ./style.css

Options

singlemd <options>
--input ........ markdown file path (.md, .markdown)
--output ....... output path. Default 'index.html'
--style ........ css path to add in template (optional)
--title ........ add custom title (optional)
--version ...... show package version
--help ......... show help menu for a command

Examples

This README.md is also this website.

Usage with Netlify

Because this CLI can output a single html file, it’s simple to input a single command using Netlify’s deploy settings.

npx singlemd --input ./README.md --output index.html --style ./public/style.css --title singlemd

Usage with Gitlab Pages

Because this CLI can output a single html file, you can use Gitlab’s CI integration to output a simple Gitlab page by adding the following .gitlab-ci.yml

image: node:8.12.0

pages:
  cache:
    paths:
    - node_modules/

  script:
  - npm install singlemd -g
  - singlemd --input ./README.md --output index.html --style ./style.css
  - mkdir ./public && mv index.html ./public
  artifacts:
    paths:
    - public
  only:
    - master

Other Options

Github Pages
- Github does allow you upload a markdown page and deploy that to its own website. It’s not configurable. You’re stuck with Jekyll Themes, and having to override any of their boilerplate css.
ShowdownJS
- The biggest inspiration for writing this package, however they don’t provide a full website output.
- The showdownjs CLI provides a way to convert your files from markdown, however they output solely the html content, but nothing surrounding it. So adding a GFM or any custom styles is not possible.

TODO

Add option for favicon
Support Multiple Themes (right now only GFM)
Support CLI abbreviations
Support for Github Actions

ℳ singlemd