A simple blog template using Middleman.

Why?

This is for blogs and blog-like sites (ie. documentation). It's intended to have just the right amount of default styling. Most blog boilerplates are either too prescriptive or too unstructured in their layouts. Both extremes make you do unneccessary front-end work to get up and running. This is intended to be a happy medium:

Also, Middleman is such a joy to work with I wanted to get more people using it over the poorly supported, poorly maintained and poorly documented Jekyll.

What does it come with?

Structure:

• Simple blog
• Pagination
• XML feed
• Tags
• Simple fluid layout with sidebar
• Minimal styling to be easily customizeable (screenshot)

Defaults:

• HAML
• SCSS
• Compass
• Susy for grids

Installation:

Middleman supports project templates. Project templates are awesome because you can keep all the boilerplate crap in one place on your box. However, the installation process is a little involved. To install middleman-blog-project-template as a template available to your user:

1. Clone the Git repository into ~/.middleman, like so git clone https://github.com/rainforestapp/Simple-Blog-Boilerplate.git ~/.middleman/simple-blog-boilerplate
2. Install Middleman (requires Ruby and Rubygems): gem install middleman
3. Use the new template argument for the middleman init command within your projects folder, where 'my_new_project' is the name of your new project folder: middleman init my_new_project --template=simple-blog-boilerplate

Usage:

1. Ensure you have Ruby + bundler installed
2. Run bundle install from within your project directory
3. Run bundle exec middleman server and go to http://0.0.0.0:4567/