jekor.com is a mostly static website built by a mix of experimental tools. It's my personal site and laboratory.
To understand the motivation for this, see http://jekor.com/article/towards-a-lifelong-content-management-system
Most content is generated from markdown files and HTML templates by a Makefile driven by Nix. Content is then served by the fsrest web server.
The primary dynamic content is user comments. These are handled by the www/post-comment program.
Additionally, jekor.com hosts a copy of the gressgraph program so that users don't have to install it. Uploads are handled by www/gressgraph/graph/POST.
- pandoc converts the markdown to HTML
- jigplate places JSON data into HTML templates
- jsonwrench massages JSON data in the pipeline (and is used for dynamic comment posting)
- jcoreutils provides some glue for some Make rules
- GNU Make builds the static content
- Bash is used by dnyamic helper programs and the Nix build script
- Nix provides a repeatable build environment
- fsrest serves the pages and accepts user input
First, Nix uses the default.nix to set up a strict environment for performing the build of the site. Next, in the clean sandbox it invokes the builder.sh script. Then, builder.sh invokes Make on the Makefile. Finally, builder.sh passes along the required programs to the dynamic scripts (mentioned in the Dnyamic Content section above) so that no only the build environment is repeatable but also the runtime environment.
The Makefile contains all rules necessary to build the static resources from sources. In this sense, jekor.com is compiled like other software. Stretching the analogy, user comments are provided at runtime as configuration (and defaults, such as empty lists, are compiled in).
The result is placed in the Nix store. (This assures that it will be read-only.) Deployment and management of dynamic content are handled elsewhere (in jen).