Announcing Magpiler

Magpiler is my own replacement for Docpad. The software simply runs through and slurps in a folder of Markdown content and JS templates and allows a dev server to serve up individual pages, and a script to generate all output for static serving.

This content is now live on Updike.org (Jareditorial, this blog, and USA.Updike.org) and I can edit the Markdown posts with a Dropbox-synced text editor (Byword) on my phone, and run a shortcut on my phone to have the server download the Markdown from Dropbox and update the content publicly. I can also sit down at my Mac and add features or lots of new content at once (using Magpiler-dev) and deploy those to the site with Git and Dropbox.

Magpiler as a tool is pretty boring but that is the point: you put the interesting bits of code in the templates for your website, which automate things for you, and then when everything is set up to your liking, you focus on the content and adding new posts, etc.