automatically create mini-website from Markdown files?

Question

Is there a tool that will automatically generate a mini-website---with automatically generated navigation---from locally-stored Markdown files?

I'm envisioning a service that will integrate with my Dropbox, look at the file structure, look at the Markdown files, and automatically create a clean little site with my pages and with hierarchical navigation.

Full-text search would be cool but not required.

Does such a tool exist?

Answer 1

The general term for the tool you speak of is called a static site generator. They are a new trend in web publishing and there are literally tons of them and new ones coming out all the time. Most of them have markdown support so you will have a task in choosing the best one.

My introduction to the topic was reading this blog post, An Introduction to Static Site Generators by Michael Gardner. If you're interested in the subject I would recommend giving it a read. It discusses the advantages to using such a strategy over a dynamic one, and also compares multiple generators. The comparison includes and ends up focusing on Jekyll which is probably the most popular static site generator as far as I can tell.

Also you will probably want to read Node Based Static Site Generators by Boris Mann who is also looking into Dropbox support as well. I have been looking into different static site generators as well and a few that I have noticed, but haven't had a chance to look at much:

• Hexo
• node-romulus