Recent Articles - Metalsmith

Using Relative Links in Metalsmith
Using Relative Links in Metalsmith
May 21, 2020 · 4 min read

Relative links in HTML increases a site's portability to be hosted from anywhere, and it's easy to automatically convert links in Metalsmith projects.


Remove Unused Assets in Metalsmith
Remove Unused Assets in Metalsmith
May 19, 2020 · 3 min read

Have assets in your source directory that are never used by your output? Save some space, get rid of them!


What is the "JAMstack"?
What is the "JAMstack"?
Apr 26, 2020 · 5 min read

Simply, it stands for: JavaScript, APIs, and Markup.


Minify Files in Metalsmith
Minify Files in Metalsmith
Mar 26, 2020 · 3 min read

Minified files maintain all the functionality of their original source but optimize for size, which in turns means faster page loads and improved SEO - and it's a snap to do in Metalsmith.


Adding a Favicon in Metalsmith
Adding a Favicon in Metalsmith
Feb 17, 2020 · 3 min read

Favicons are low-resolution website icons that web browsers use to help identify bookmarks, tabs, and desktop icons at a glance - and they're easy to add in Metalsmith.


Adding a Sitemap in Metalsmith
Adding a Sitemap in Metalsmith
Jan 11, 2020 · 4 min read

Sitemaps are XML files that provide a list of all pages on a site that should be crawled by search engines, and they're very simple to add in Metalsmith.


Adding a Google Site Ownership Verification File in Metalsmith
Adding a Google Site Ownership Verification File in Metalsmith
Dec 28, 2019 · 4 min read

In order to manage your website in the Google Search Console you first need to verify ownership of your site. One way of doing this is by downloading a special HTML file from Google and uploading it to your site for Google to crawl.


Linting Metalsmith Output HTML
Linting Metalsmith Output HTML
Dec 8, 2019 · 3 min read

Best I know, there aren't any good ways to test the output of a Metalsmith build to make sure things like updated dependencies didn't break styling or content. But one thing we can do is lint the output HTML to make sure it's at least syntactically correct and doesn't contain broken links.


Using Font Awesome with Metalsmith
Using Font Awesome with Metalsmith
Dec 1, 2019 · 3 min read

Font Awesome is a large set of icon web fonts I've been using in multiple projects for years. They add new icons and entirely new styles all the time and in general their free tier is good enough for most projects to start. Let's dive into including their static assets into a Metalsmith project.


Using Bootstrap 4 with Metalsmith
Using Bootstrap 4 with Metalsmith
Sep 22, 2019 · 6 min read

As a primarily back-end developer I tend to use Bootstrap in most of my full-stack applications. It's a great way to save some time getting a small project or prototype up and running. Using Bootstrap in Metalsmith isn't complicated, it just takes 3 plugins.


Starting a Metalsmith Project
Starting a Metalsmith Project
Sep 19, 2019 · 12 min read

Metalsmith is a plugin-based static site generator originally from Segment. It's a current favorite of mine because of how sites are built as a pipeline of plugins where the output of each plugin is the input of the next. This allows for strong control over what happens and when it happens.