Packs

Prefer to watch? The packs tutorial adds a questions and answers section from start to finish, in three minutes.

On WordPress, features come from plugins. On HotDog, they come from packs. A pack is a set of ready-made sections, page layouts and styles. Adding one copies its files into your site, where they're yours: reviewed, versioned and published like everything else.

Why no code

WordPress plugins run with your whole site's rights, and that's where most WordPress break-ins start. A pack can't hold JavaScript or anything else that runs: its templates go through the same escaping, checks and security policy as your own. And nothing updates behind your back: a new version is a change you see before it's published.

The packs that come with HotDog

Pack	What it adds
calendar	Events, an upcoming-events section and a calendar feed people can subscribe to. See Events.
docs	A documentation section with a sidebar, part pages and previous and next links.
downloads	Files to download, with their type and size.
faq	Questions that open to show their answers.
gallery	A grid of pictures that open full size.
jobs	Job openings with closing dates. Closed ones leave the list by themselves.
location-and-hours	Your address, a map link, phone, email and opening hours.
menu-and-prices	A price list in groups, and plans side by side.
payment-links	Buy, book and donate buttons that open your payment provider's own checkout: Stripe, PayPal, Square, Ko-fi, Liberapay and others.
podcast	Episodes with a player, and the feed podcast apps subscribe to.
portfolio	Projects with a cover, details and pictures.
recipes	Ingredients, steps, times and servings.
related-posts	At the end of an article, the ones that share the most tags with it.
share-links	Plain share links for Mastodon, Bluesky, LinkedIn and email, with no tracking.
shop	A product catalog with a page per product. Each Buy button opens your payment provider's checkout.
table-of-contents	A long page's headings, linked, at its top.
team	A page per person, and a list of everyone.
testimonials	Quotes from customers, with a name and a role.

A few of them on the same site:

Each pack's notes, shown when you add it, say how to use it. Every pack also has a README in HotDog's packs folder.

Search engines. The faq, location-and-hours, team, recipes, jobs and shop packs also tell search engines what the page is (questions and answers, a business, a person, a recipe, a job, a product), so they can show richer results. You don't have to do anything for that.

Add one

In your site's folder:

hotdog-cms pack add faq

Then put its section on a page, in the editor's section library or in the page's front matter, as its notes say. Commit the new files and the change to site.yaml, ideally through a review.

Command	What it does
hotdog-cms pack list	The packs in your site, and the ones that come with HotDog.
hotdog-cms pack add faq	Add a pack that comes with HotDog.
hotdog-cms pack add ../notice-pack	Add one from a folder.
hotdog-cms pack add https://git.example.org/packs/[email protected]	Add one from a git repository, at a version.
hotdog-cms pack remove faq	Take a pack's files out.
hotdog-cms pack check ../notice-pack	What a pack would install, or what's wrong with it.

• Running add again with a newer version upgrades it.
• A file already in your site is never overwritten, unless you add -force.
• In the editor, a pack's sections appear in the section library, marked with the pack's name.

Started your site before HotDog CMS 0.2? For the search engine data, add this line to partials/schema.html:

{{ range pageData . }}<script type="application/ld+json">{{ . }}</script>{{ end }}

Make your own

A section you've built for one site can become a pack for all of them. Make your own pack goes through it step by step.