AkashaCMS is a family of tools for converting ideas into websites or EPUB3 eBooks while maintaining separation between content, layout and design.
AkashaCMS is built around the AkashaRender rendering engine, with server-side DOM manipulation, and several plugins, to implement many useful content patterns. The result is easily deployable HTML/JavaScript/CSS/etc files for upload to simple webservers, or cloud systems like AWS S3.
Akasha means the basis and essence of all things in the material world; the first material element created from the astral world.
Your content
Markdown or AsciiDoc documents are converted to HTML.
LESS files are converted to CSS.
Conversion plugins are easy to create.
AkashaRender
Fast and flexible rendering to HTML.
You fully control page layout templates.
Support for several template engines including EJS, Liquid, Handlebars, and Nunjucks.
Template plugins are easy to create.
Server-side DOM processing engine (Mahabhuta) uses a jQuery-like API to describe DOM transformations, adding huge flexibility.
Partials are template snippets which can be used anywhere.
Deployment
Output is a simple directory hierarchy containing your files.
Post-processing with minifiers or lint tools is easy to integrate.
Deploy to normal web hosts (Apacha/NGINX/etc) or anywhere else that can serve static files, such as AWS S3.
Deployment uses normal tools like rsync.
Easy local development
Editing content is easy with any editor supporting Mardown or AsciiDoc files. Your content is stored as normal files in the file system, and are easily processed with normal tools. Content rendering is easy to run on your laptop, for immediate feedback as you write. No far distant server is required.
Fast content delivery
Flat content files means no server-side processing to delay delivery to site visitors. You have full freedom to implement techniques like code splitting, asset optimization, or progressive images.
Safe low-cost deployment
There are no server-side components, and no databases. Because the deployment is only files, you push those files to a simple web server or a CDN. Miscreants automatically have fewer routes to intrude into your site, and server costs are minimized.
SEO Friendly
Rendered websites are fully static HTML, and are therefore fully readable by search engines. Because you're in full control of the HTML, you can use any tags you like from OpenGraph to Microformats, to further improve SEO factors.
Web Framework agnostic
Because you're in full control of the HTML, you can use any JavaScript or CSS you like.
The goal for AkashaCMS is to provide most of the flexibility of a full scale CMS, incorporate modern JavaScript/CSS UI frameworks, while producing static HTML files, and skipping the administrative overhead of running a full CMS.
Supports any kind of website
Consider that a blog is just a website with an index presented in reverse chronological order, and where there is an RSS file. AkashaCMS doesn't force any content hierarchy in the file system. Instead, you organize your content as you wish. For example, adding a blog to an AkashaCMS site simply requires using the Blog plugin, which in turn scans selected content files to construct a Blog-like presentation.
