Create custom static html static websites with Nunjucks, Bun and TailwindCSS. If you know Jinja2 or Nunjucks creating static websites will be a breeze. Of course, you can switch Nunjucks with other templating language you want doT, handlebarsjs, ejs, underscorejs etc. You can opt-out tailwind if you want.

• Clone this repository or Click on Use template;
• To create a new route/page in site/pages directory create a new folder with the route path name (friendly url chars) and inside that folder create an index.html file with contents;
• bun run build: this command will scan site folder and compile the static website in public folder;
• bun run dev: use this command while working on the website for hot reload;
• Run bun run build to generate prod static website then bun run prod to serve static website in prod;
• To serve static website generated you could use serve package from vercel using this command serve -l 5173 from inside public folder;

Note: If tailwind fails run this command: npx tailwindcss -i ./site/assets/tailwind.css -o ./site/assets/styles.css and try again bun run dev.

Folder structure:

site
├── assets
│   ├── bunjucks.jpeg
│   ├── reload.js
│   ├── styles.css
│   └── tailwind.css
├── layouts
│   └── base.html
├── macros
│   └── navbar.html
└── pages
    ├── 404
    │   └── index.html            -> /404
    ├── about
    │   └── index.html            -> /about  
    ├── blog
    │   ├── how-to-make-pancakes  
    │   │   ├── index.html        -> /blog/how-to-make-pancakes
    │   │   └── where-to-buy-food 
    │   │       └── index.html    -> /blog/how-to-make-pancakes/where-to-buy-food
    │   └── index.html            -> /blog
    ├── index.html                -> /
    ├── robots.txt                -> /robots.txt  
    └── sitemap.xml               -> /sitemap.xml

You have site directory which holds the following:

• assets: here add your js, css, images or other static files (files: robots.txt, sitemap.xml are used for SEO and file reload.js for hot reload);
• layouts: here add your base.html aka layouts (each page could have a different layout);
• macros: here create reusable html components (partials, widgets, etc) and import them in your layouts or pages.
• pages: here add your website main pages, bassically what you see when visiting a web page;

Routes will be created automatically from pages directory. Filenames and directories will be converted to paths. File index/html is a bit "special" and will be used for root paths (/). Files robots.txt and sitemap.xml are generated automatically from bunjucks.config.json and routes.

In file bunjucks.config.json you have the following configuration:

{
    "port": 5173,               // change port if is in use on your machine
    "domain": "localhost:5173", // when ready put here the website domain 
    "use_tailwind": true,       // by default we are using tailwind, but you can turn it off
    "store": {}                 // data you want to pass down to the html templates ({{ store.mydata }}). The envs (including .env) from process.env will be added to store variable. 
}

• In github, go to Settings tab look for Pages on the left panel. On Pages, select branch main and folder docs then click save (a github action will run each time you push changes to repo);
• In bunjucks.config.json add the github pages url: yourgithubusername.github.io/repo-name in my case it was: "domain": "climentea.github.io/bunjucks";
• While adding links make sure to add the domain prefix to links and static files, like: href="{{domain}}/etc/route, href="{{domain}}/blog" (you don't need this if you deploy it with the other methods);
• Run bun run build and rename public folder generated to docs;

• In bunjucks.config.json keep domain empty like this: "domain": "";
• Run bun run build and rename public to netlify;
• Create a netlify.toml file and add the following configs:

[build]
  base = "/"
  publish = "netlify/"

• Create a Netlify account and point to your github repo containing your static site (like this repo);
• In Netlify dashboard go to Deploys and click on Trigger deploy dropdown - select Clear cache and deploy site;

• In bunjucks.config.json add your domain: "domain": "mysite.com";
• Run bun run build rename public to static-site and place it next to docker-compose.yml and Caddyfile (Checkout docker-deploy inside this repo);
• Install (if not already) docker on the VM;
• Modify Caddyfile with your domain and email;
• Run docker-compose up -d your website is now served with SSL by Caddy (Note: depending on your hosting you may need to do some configuration on their dashboard);
• In the docker-deploy folder in this repo you can see the configuration to deploy multiple static websites with Caddy.

Other static site generators are easy to use if you use a pre-made template, but it gets really hard when you want to create a custom template (tons of configs, you have to go thru tons of documentation, just try to create a custom template and you'll see what I mean). Yes, you could just use html, but it can get messy really quick for big pages/blogs. You write just html with some templating, no markdown, rst, etc. If you want markdown, rst you can use one of the existing static site generators available.