Gaius Platform Documentation

Gaius is an ultra-fast static site generation platform that was inspired by Jekyll. The engine uses a combination of Markdown files and Liquid Templates to generate a static site which can be easily deployed to Github Pages or any other HTTP server.

The main features of the platform are:

  1. Performance: site generation is blazing fast.
  2. Visualization: users are able visualize how the engine will generate their site from source data, and be warned if there's any potential for data loss.
  3. Theme Support: theme resources are stored indepedantly from site source data. Mulitple themes can be installed alongside one another, and users can easily switch between themes when generating their sites.
  4. Convenience: several quality of life features (auto generating tag listing pages, site navigation, etc.) are provided to make it as easy as possible to standup a new site.
  5. Markdown Extensions: many different markdown extensions are supported, allowing for richer content creation.

The Gaius platform consists of the following components:

  1. Gaius Engine: A console application and micro-web server that is used to generate your site and test it locally.
  2. Gaius Github Actions Workflow: Provides a Github Actions Workflow which automatically generates and deploys your site to Github Pages.
  3. Gaius Starter Site: Provides a nearly empty starter site and template (Bootstrap based) that you can use as the basis for your own sites.
  4. Gaius Default Themes: Provides default themes(s) for you to use or extend.

Gaius Engine

The Gaius engine is used to both generate and test your site locally. It is written 100% in C# (.NET 5.0), and weights around 740KB (not counting the .NET runtime components).

Gaius engine in action

Gaius engine in action

The engine also contains a Kestrel based micro-server that can be used to run and test your generated site locally. By default it runs on http://localhost:5000.

Gaius engine running local HTTP server to test site

Gaius engine running local HTTP server to test site

Gaius Github Actions

Gaius provides a Github Actions workflow to make it extremely easy to deploy your site using Github Pages. Simply maintain your source input files in the main branch, and the Github Actions workflow will automatically use the Gaius engine to process your source input files, and push the output to the gh-pages branch. You can also view workflow runs directly in the Github interface, allowing you to easily troubleshoot any site generation issues.

Gaius Starter Site

The Gaius starter site provides a nearly empty starter site that can be used as the basis for creating new sites. It comes with a homepage (blog listing page), a single blog post, and the default Gaius theme. The theme is built using Bootstrap and Liquid Templates.

There is also a more fleshed out Gaius example site which demonstrates the capabilities of the Gaius platform.

Eating our Own Dog Food!

We use the Gaius platform to manage this site (the Gaius Documentation site). This provides us with an excellent way to test and ehnance the platform and ensure that it continues to work smoothly.

Getting Started

Please consult our Getting Started guide to start building a new site using Gaius!