New website

I started my personal website back in October 2018. By the time I used Django with Python 2.7 with an SQLite database. The photogallery was managed by Django-Photologue which allowed watermarking and metadata removal. However, not having updated the tech stack for a while, I found it impossible to safely continue using the website, especially since Python 2 is now history. While I could use Django and Photologue with Python 3 and redo the website (partially), I decided to drop anything with database since what I need is mostly serving static assets and my documents/notes in Org-Mode, Markdown (rare) and HTML formats. For this, I decided to program a system with FastAPI as the presentation layer - which is supposed to be replaceable by any other framework - and a converting facility utilizing Pandoc for export. Jinja2 templates are also used to serve the exported pages in the Templating system I wanted. This allows an experience very close to dragging and dropping my content files as well as photos, allowing complex nesting of the pages. The website code has the following features:

• export Org and Markdown files to a Jinja2 HTML template, some components of which can be dynamically populated
• support tags
• Denote-style filename metadata extraction as well as document heading variables
• manage subdirectories:
  • if a folder has a single content file, regard that file as the page content, helping organizing pages
  • if is a folder which includes further subfolders or supported files, regards it as nested item
  • allow a different export directory to keep outputs clean
• generate sitemap and rss automatically
• photogallery management
  • several albums support per folder structure
• user-defined template (Bootstrap 5 default)
• user-defined redirects to support smooth migration from previous websites (see below for instructions)
• minimal usage of JavaScript and external scripts and load them only when necessary (e.g. for Mathjax support)

I also have some other features in mind that I hope I can develop in the near future in my free time:

• export using Emacs batch command
• picture watermark and thumbnail generation
• picture file metadata removal
• pagination
• user-defined redirects to (redirects from already supported)
• better test coverage

There are also some other features that are ideal to have, but I don't know when I can get to implement them:

• support pictures for Latex formulas if set so in the config to remove Mathjax JavaScript
• per-folder template setup
• sharing on social media
• allow comments on pages

The new website code is free and open source and can be accessed in my Codeberg repository.