Revamping My Projects Page with Nikola

So, considering I’m so invested in Nikola already, I produced the projectpages plugin and also made it publicly available. The plugin produces two files, projects/index.html and projects/projects.json, and also enforces a specific framework for the stories used for the individual projects, because all the metadata are taken from special meta fields.

In Nikola, post metadata is completely arbitrary (in fact, that’s my fault; I contributed the feature back in February 2013). You can put anything you want, and Nikola will let any plugin and template use the information in any way it likes.

And that is basically the gist of the projectpages plugin. Using some specific meta fields, the plugin produces all the files. It also provides ready-made templates for the story pages (though the default templates are designed to fit my site only).

This plugin is basically a special index page generator. It takes all the stories in the designated projects directory, looks at the metadata, and lists them in a nice format (slider of featured projects + a list of everything else that is not hidden). Everything automated and done for you, as is always with Nikola — which values simplicity and ease of use.

The result: a pretty projects page. And some good OSS work done.

PS. I just underwent a move to DigitalOcean and I love them. Moreover, this blog is proudly HTTPS only as of yesterday.