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Under the Hood: Custom Python Site Builder

To build this retro site, I bypassed modern frameworks and built my own custom Static Site Generator (SSG) using Python. The architecture separates the site’s content from its structure, utilizing a custom template rendering engine.

The Compilation Engine (compile_site.py)

The core of the site builder is a Python script that reads the entire site’s architecture from a YAML configuration file (site-template.yaml). Key features of this engine include:

• Recursive Template Rendering: The engine recursively parses base and child templates, searching for and replacing custom variable placeholders (e.g., or) with injected text or full HTML files.
• Dynamic HTML Generation: The builder can detect when a variable is a dictionary and automatically convert it into properly formatted, nested HTML unordered lists (<ul> and <li>), which I used to generate the site’s file explorer structures.
• Automated Build Process: The script automatically generates the necessary directory structures and compiles the final static HTML files into a dedicated build/ directory for deployment.

Image Retrofier Tool (image_retrofier.py)

To ensure all visual assets perfectly matched the vintage aesthetic, I also developed a custom Python Command Line Interface (CLI) tool using the Python Imaging Library (PIL).

• Resolution Scaling: The script automatically calculates the required factor to downscale modern high-resolution images to a classic target resolution, defaulting to a 640x480 ratio.
• Color Palette Reduction: It converts the image by aggressively reducing its bit depth (defaulting to an 8-bit palette of 256 colors), authentically simulating early web graphics.

Preview