A zero-dependency static website generator

If Emacs is already your primary editor, you have a static website generator. Org mode and its HTML publishing tools ship with Emacs, so there is no separate generator to install, package manager to maintain, or application to run in production. Compared with adding Hugo or another tool to my setup, this site is effectively a zero-dependency build.

That does not mean the website depends on literally nothing. It means Emacs is the only build tool, and I already use it to write the source files.

Project layout

The repository separates source files from generated files:

content/    Org pages and posts
static/     CSS and other files copied without changes
docs/       generated site served by GitHub Pages
publish.el  Org Publish configuration

The files in docs/ are generated from content/ and static/.

Publish configuration

Org Publish already has the two operations this site needs: export Org files to HTML and copy static files. The configuration combines both into one project named blog.

(setq org-publish-project-alist
      '(("blog-pages"
         :publishing-function org-html-publish-to-html)
        ("blog-static"
         :publishing-function org-publish-attachment)
        ("blog"
         :components ("blog-pages" "blog-static"))))

The real configuration derives its directories from the location of publish.el. This keeps the build independent of the directory where Emacs starts. Org supplies a baseline stylesheet; the small site stylesheet loads after it and adjusts the reading width, links, and navigation.

Publishing from Emacs

My Doom Emacs configuration loads the project file:

(load (expand-file-name "~/source/blog/publish.el") nil 'nomessage)

That registers the publish projects and defines vetr0s-blog-publish. I run it with M-x vetr0s-blog-publish. A prefix argument forces Emacs to rebuild every file.

The same project works in a clean Emacs session, without Doom:

emacs --batch -Q --load ./publish.el --funcall vetr0s-blog-publish

Batch builds always force a full rebuild. During interactive builds, Org keeps its incremental build cache in .org-timestamps/. If the optional htmlize package is present, source blocks get syntax colors; the site still builds without it.

Deployment

The build produces plain files under docs/. GitHub Pages serves that directory from the repository's main branch at vetr0s.dev. There is no application server, database, JavaScript runtime, or generator-specific deployment service.

Publishing means running the batch build, reviewing the generated files, and pushing them to GitHub. For a personal website, Emacs, Org, and a little CSS are enough.