ConsolePress

ConsolePress is a minimal static blog generator for small personal sites.

It turns Markdown files with frontmatter into a static site with a built-in terminal-inspired theme. There is no database, no admin panel, and no server runtime on the deployed site.

Features

• Markdown posts in posts/
• Markdown pages in pages/
• Draft support
• Newest-first post sorting
• Index page, posts archive, and RSS feed
• Static asset copying from static/
• Tiny codebase that is easy to read and modify

Project Layout

posts/                    blog posts as Markdown files
pages/                    standalone pages such as about, now, projects, contact
templates/                HTML templates
static/                   CSS and other static assets
scripts/build.js          build script
scripts/new-post.js       post scaffold helper
scripts/now.js            /now page helper
site.config.js            site metadata
consolepress              optional CLI wrapper
public/                   generated site output

Quick Start

Install dependencies:

npm install

Build the site:

npm run build

Serve the generated output locally:

npm run serve

Create a new draft post:

npm run new -- "My first post"

Append an entry to the /now page log:

npm run now -- "Shipped a small improvement"

You can also use the wrapper CLI directly:

./consolepress build
./consolepress new "My first post"
./consolepress now "Small update"

Content Format

Posts use frontmatter like this:

---
title: Some post title
date: 2026-05-02
tags: [notes, systems]
draft: true
---

Write here.

Standalone pages use frontmatter like this:

---
title: About
slug: about
description: Short page description
---

Page content here.

Configuration

Update site.config.js to set:

• site title
• author
• description
• canonical URL
• theme
• terminal prompt label
• footer location text
• homepage intro copy

Example:

export default {
  title: 'My Site',
  author: 'Your Name',
  description: 'Notes on software and systems.',
  url: 'https://example.com',
  language: 'en',
  theme: 'cyberpunk_crt',
  prompt: 'writer@console:~$',
  location: 'internet',
  intro: 'builder. writer. notes on software, systems, and things worth keeping.',
  intro_secondary: 'small static blog starter with markdown input and plain HTML output.',
};

Theme selection works like this:

• use theme: 'default' for the built-in base theme
• use theme: 'cyberpunk_crt' for the CRT variant included in static/
• add your own static/<name>.css file and set theme: '<name>' to ship a custom theme

Deploying

ConsolePress builds to plain static files, so it works well with:

• Cloudflare Pages
• Netlify
• GitHub Pages
• any static web server

Typical deploy flow:

1. Run npm install
2. Run npm run build
3. Deploy the public/ directory

Why This Exists

ConsolePress is for people who want a writing-focused site without a framework, database, or content management UI. The source of truth is just Markdown files in Git.

License

Apache-2.0