Introduction (Haunt Reference Manual)

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1 Introduction

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Haunt is a hackable static site generator written in Guile Scheme. A -static site generator assists an author with generating the HTML pages -that they publish on the web. Unlike “content management systems” -such as Wordpress or Drupal, static site generators are not dynamic -web applications (complete with a relational database) that build -pages on-the-fly. Instead, web pages are built in advance, on the -author’s computer, and copied to a web server when it is time to -publish changes. The consequence of this design is that the web -server no longer needs to run a complex, potentially insecure web -application that connects to a database to retrieve data. Static -files can be served easily by any generic web server. Since there is -no web application or database server to deal with, static websites -are easier to maintain, more secure, and resistant to high web traffic -(“slashdotting.”) Furthermore, the entire website is stored in -plain text, which allows the files to be version-controlled rather -than kept in a relational database with no concept of history that -needs to be backed up regularly. -

At the time that Haunt was conceived, there existed literally hundreds -of other static site generators. Why add another one? Haunt -differentiates itself from most other static site generators in that -it aspires to the Emacs philosophy of “practical software freedom.” -Not only is the source code available under a Free Software license, -as most static site generators are, it is designed to be easily hacked -and extended without altering the core source code. Haunt -purposefully blurs the line between document and program, author and -programmer, by embracing the notion of data as code. A Haunt-based -website is not simply data, but a computer program. This design -strategy encourages authors to automate repetitive tasks and empowers -them to extend the software with their own ideas. -

To make such a system work well, a general-purpose, extensible -programming language is needed. A traditional configuration file -format simply will not do. The programming language that we feel is -best suited to this task is Scheme, a clean and elegant dialect of -Lisp. We believe that by giving authors the full expressive power of -Scheme, they will be able to produce better websites and make better -use of their time than with less programmable systems and less capable -programming languages. Authors should feel empowered to hack the -system to make it do what they want rather than what some programmer -decided they should want. And perhaps most importantly, building -websites with Haunt should be fun. -

Websites written in Haunt are described as purely functional programs -that accept “posts”, text documents containing arbitrary metadata, -as input and transform them into complete HTML pages using Scheme -procedures. Haunt has no opinion about what markup language authors -should use to write their posts and will happily work with any format -for which a “reader” procedure exists. Likewise, Haunt also has no -opinion about how authors should structure their sites, but has sane -defaults. Currently, there exist helpful “builder” procedures that -do common tasks such as generating a blog or Atom feed. While the -built-in features may be enough for some, they surely will not be -enough for all. Haunt’s Scheme API empowers authors to easily tweak -existing components, write replacements, or add entirely new features -that do things no else has thought to do yet. -

Happy haunting! -

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