* SiteGen Home Page

Notice the drop-down menus on this page? It is part of a low-bandwidth, robust way to index a Web site's pages.

In spite of this script's low version number, this Ruby script is about the sixth embodiment I have written for this scheme, in Java, C++ and in various Perl versions. I finally decided to give Ruby a try.

The basics:

To use this scheme, your Web pages need to have:
- A group name, placed in a META tag (located in each page):
  <META NAME="group" CONTENT="GROUP/SUBGROUP/SUBGROUP">
- A group title (located in only one page per group):
  <META NAME="groupTitle" CONTENT="Interesting Sidelights">
- A title for each page, which must be unique in the group to which it belongs:
  <TITLE> Some Tall Tales </TITLE>
Download the Ruby script "sitegen.rb", available on this page. Locate it anywhere convenient, change its file suffix to suit your system's requirements, and edit its user variables to suit your needs.
Always make a full set of backup pages, set aside before using this script, because this script reads, edits, and writes all your site's pages.
Finally, to prevent a particular page from being included in the menus, give it a group name of "NOSHOW", like this:

<META NAME="group" CONTENT="NOSHOW">

If you can't find the instructions in the download script, that's because this is the instructions. This script is very easy to use, once you grasp how it works and what needs to be included in your pages to allow it to work.

SiteGen is © Copyright 2005, P. Lutus. All rights reserved.
SiteGen is released under the General Public License.
SiteGen is also Careware (http://arachnoid.com/careware),
unless this kind of idea makes you crazy, in which case SiteGen is free (e.g. GPL).

Click here for a Web page that shows the Ruby script.
Click here for a plain-text download of the Ruby script.

Here is the prior Perl version, nearly identical in function, but the Ruby version above is shorter and easier to understand and modify.

Click here for a Web page that shows the Perl script.
Click here for a plain-text download of the Perl script.

Rename the script as your system requires, put it in an appropriate location on your system, give it executable permissions. Be sure to edit the script to suit your local requirements (note the block that starts "# BEGIN user settings").