Starting from scratch

The starter is one way to begin, not the only one. To design a site yourself, make it without the starter and write its templates: Statac needs none of the starter’s files.

Make the site

statac new --no-starter my-site

Made a new site in `my-site`: 2 files.
Times are in Europe/London, as this machine is set.

statac.yaml:
  title: My Site
  language: en-GB
  timezone: Europe/London
  date_format: 31 December 2025
  date_short: 31 Dec 2025
  date_day: 31 Dec
  date_stamp: 31 Dec 2025, 15:04
  feed_key: 27e0ced8-2ca3-8e78-aaea-507b11e02966

Next: `cd my-site`, then add your own templates to `templates/`: see https://statac.dev/templates/.

--no-starter asks the first four of the questions and skips the last. Answering 2 to the last question, “What should the site start with?”, does the same.

The site holds two files:

Only the starter’s templates use date_short, date_day and date_stamp. Keep them if you might take files from the starter later. Otherwise, remove them.

The first page

In content/index.md:

---
title: Home
---
Hello.

With the page and no template, the build stops and names the template the page needs:

error  Missing template: there is no `templates/home.html`
  content/index.md, line 1
   1 │ ---
     │ ^^^
  Add the template, or choose another with `layout:`.
  More: https://statac.dev/e/missing-template/

Wrote nothing: 1 error stopped the build.

In templates/home.html:

<!doctype html>
<html lang="{{ page.language }}">
<title>{{ site.title }}</title>
<h1>{{ page.title }}</h1>
{{ page.content }}
</html>

Wrote 1 page and 1 other file to `_site` in 0.00 seconds.

The other file is code.css. Run statac serve to watch the site in a browser as you write: see serving a site.

A template for each kind of page

As the site grows, each kind of page needs its template. Statac names each one that is missing, so build as you go and add them as you’re asked.

A page’s layout: chooses another template, and a folder’s pages.layout: chooses one for every page in it: see which template builds a page. Put what every page shares in one template and extend it in the others.

The starter also makes these pages. Add whichever you want:

What Statac writes for you

Some of what’s on a page comes from Statac, not from the starter, so a site without the starter has it too:

• The writing. Headings, links, pictures, code, footnotes and callouts are built as plain HTML, which your stylesheet styles. A file in snippets/markdown/ replaces any of them: see without a file of your own.
• Pictures in several sizes. A picture written in Markdown is published in several sizes, as AVIF with a JPEG fallback.
• The colours for code. Each build publishes code.css. Link it in your template’s <head> to colour code blocks.

Taking from the starter

The starter lists every file the starter has. To take one, make a site with the starter in another folder and copy the file across. The starter’s files are ordinary templates, snippets and stylesheets, and most start with a line saying what they build.

To take them all, run this in the site’s folder:

statac new --update --missing

It writes every starter file the site doesn’t have, and data/words.yaml, which holds the words they show readers. It doesn’t write the sample posts, notes and photographs.

Without --missing, statac new --update on a site that has none of the starter’s files says so once, and changes nothing:

This site has none of the starter's files. To add them, run `statac new --update --missing`.

Once a site has a starter file, --update keeps it up to date as described in bring the starter up to date, and lists the starter files the site doesn’t have.

Where next?

• Templates: which template builds a page, and everything a template can show
• Snippets: pieces of HTML you call by name, and how the pieces of the writing are built
• Assets and static files: stylesheets, scripts and files published as they are
• Feeds, sitemaps and other files: a feed’s template, a sitemap and robots.txt