CoolStatGen

Status: In Beta | Type: Windows Desktop Tool | Year: 2020 | Techs: .NET/WPF/C#

Introduction

CoolStatGen is a Static Site Generator (SSG) software to generate and manage websites easily using just text editing skills. It works by creating a static html website from a set of content stored in Markdown format text files using predefined website templates.

Compared to dynamic server generated websites, static sites has many advantages: they load faster and are very secure as they do not have anything that executes as code. They are easier to maintain than manually coding each pages, as the html template can be changed anytime without affecting the content. However, they are limited in terms of interactivity like commenting and login features, but that can be added with other third party tools.

Features

• Stand alone application that do not require any installation and can be executed even from a USB drive.
• Supports all basic Markdown syntaxes and a simpler syntax for creating tables from a CSV file.
• Supports multiple website templates.
• Supports top level menus and side menus under each of them.
• Supports configurable Welcome message box on the home page.
• Provides two options for home page: feature cards and site map. Marking a page as featured will make it appear on home page.
• Supports configurable side widgets that can appear on all pages.
• Website files and configurations are stored in simple text/xml files which advanced users can easily edit.

Supported Syntax

• Basic Markdown tags
  All basic Markdown tags: Headings, Bold, Italic, Blockquote, Ordered List, Unordered List, Code, Horizontal Rule, Link, Image as listed in Markdown page.
• Extended table tag
  Create a simple text file with columns separated by comma and keeping the headings in the first line and rows in subsequent lines.
  To add the table to a page, use the syntax: [ E:file.csv]

Example file content:
No, Item, Total
1,Item-1,100
2,Item-2,200
3,Item-3,300

Screenshots

Home page showing selected website with its menu structure and pages and editable page content in Markdown syntax:

Settings page showing configurable items:

Home page of the generated website with feature card option:

A website page showing markdown output:

A simple text page:

Home page with site map option:

The same website with a different template:

Another page:

Download

Download Link

After downloading, unzip the file and double click the exe to launch it on a Windows computer.
As of now, this does not require a license key as it is still in Beta stage and can have unexpected errors.