picopaper

A minimal static site generator for blogs built with Python 3 and Jinja2

• Status: alpha - expect many changes
• Goals: keeping it simple and easy to understand
• Demo: picopaper.com

Show cases:

• securitypending.com

---

Features

Available:

• Simple use, easy to understand and modify
• config file for settings
• Themes
• Long- and short form content
• Pages
• Static files
• separate feeds (used for categories, tagging, etc) /feed/{tag}
• exclusion of feeds from main feed (drafts or system notes)
• HTML anchors for headers

Ideas:

• RSS
• Dark mode
• logo
• custom error pages (404, etc)

Not planned:

---

Usage

Creating a new page or article

Put markdown file into items dir. Important naming convention:

2025-10-03_long_building-a-static-site-generator.md
2025-10-05_short_quick-update_draft.md

Format: YYYY-MM-DD_type_slug[_feed].md

• 2025-10-03 - date of the article
• _long_ - type of content: long, short, or page
• building-a-static-site-generator - slug/path for the URL
• _draft (optional) - feed tag for categorization

The first # header is the title of the article - no frontmatter needed.

Types of content:

• long - only title with link to articles will be displayed in feed
• short - title and all content will be displayed
• page - won't be displayed in feed at all

Feeds

Posts can be tagged with an optional feed category (e.g., _python, _webdev). Posts with feed tags:

• Appear on the main page (unless excluded in config)
• Have their own feed page at /feed/{tag}/

Configuration in config.py:

# Exclude specific feeds from main page (they'll still have /feed/name/ pages)
EXCLUDE_FEEDS_FROM_MAIN = ['draft', 'private']

This is useful for draft posts or topic-specific content you want separated from the main feed.

---

Installation

1. Create and activate virtual environment:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # On Linux/Mac
# or: venv\Scripts\activate  # On Windows

2. Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Configure your blog in config.py:

BLOG_TITLE = "My Blog"
BLOG_DESCRIPTION = "A simple blog built with picopaper"
THEME = "default"

4. Generate the site:

venv/bin/python picopaper.py

5. Serve locally for testing:

cd output
python3 -m http.server 8000

Visit http://localhost:8000

Docker

Build and run with Docker:

# Build the image
docker build -t picopaper .

# Run the container
docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/app picopaper

For Podman (recommended for rootless):

# Build the image
podman build -t picopaper .

# Run with user namespace mapping
podman run --rm --userns=keep-id -v $(pwd):/app picopaper

The generated site will be available in the output/ directory.

---

Directory Structure

• items/ - Markdown content files
• theme/ - Theme directory containing templates and assets
  • default/ - Default theme
    • templates/ - Jinja2 templates
    • assets/ - CSS and static assets
• images/ - Image files (copied to output)
• static/ - Static files copied as-is (GPG keys, .well-known, etc.)
• output/ - Generated site (do not edit)
• config.py - Blog configuration

Themes

Themes are organized in the theme/ directory. Each theme has its own subdirectory containing:

• templates/ - Jinja2 template files
• assets/ - CSS, JavaScript, and other static assets

To switch themes, change the THEME setting in config.py

---

Security

For security concerns or reports, please contact via hello a t uphillsecurity d o t com gpg.

---

License

Apache License

Version 2.0, January 2004

http://www.apache.org/licenses/

• ✅ Commercial use
• ✅ Modification
• ✅ Distribution
• ✅ Patent use
• ✅ Private use
• ✅ Limitations
• ❌Trademark use
• ❌Liability
• ❌Warranty