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Words you'll meet

Plain explanations of the terms these docs use, from terminal to pull request.

You don't need to know all of these before you start. Come back when a word stops you.

Your computer

  • Terminal: The window where you type commands. On macOS it's the Terminal app; on Windows, PowerShell or Terminal; on Linux, usually Terminal too. When the docs show a line like hotdog-cms serve, you type it there and press Enter.

  • Command: A line you type in the terminal. The first word is the program (hotdog-cms), the rest tells it what to do (serve).

  • Folder, current folder: The terminal is always "in" a folder. cd mysite moves into the folder called mysite. Most HotDog commands work on the site in the current folder.

  • Path: Where a file is, written with slashes, like content/about.md: the file about.md inside the folder content.

Your site

  • Markdown: A simple way of writing formatted text: # A heading, **bold**, - a list item. See Markdown.

  • YAML: A simple way of writing settings, one per line: name: My site. site.yaml is written in YAML, and so is the top of each page.

  • Front matter: The settings at the top of a page file, between two lines of ---: its title, its date, its summary. See Front matter.

  • Template, layout, section: The design. A layout is the shape of a kind of page (an article, a plain page). A section is a block you can stack on a page, like a big opening heading or a row of cards.

  • Build: Turning your folder into finished web pages, in public/.

Git

  • Git: A program that keeps every version of a folder's files. HotDog uses it to keep your site's history.

  • Repository (repo): A folder kept by git, with all its history. Your site lives in one.

  • Git platform: A website that keeps repositories for you and lets people work on them together: GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Forgejo, Codeberg or Bitbucket.

  • Commit: One saved change, with a message saying what changed, who made it and when.

  • Branch: A separate line of changes in a repository. The live site is built from one branch (usually main); drafts are other branches.

  • Pull request (PR), merge request: A request to bring one branch's changes into another, so they can be reviewed first. Accepting it is called merging. GitLab calls it a merge request.

  • Push, clone: Pushing sends your commits to the git platform. Cloning copies a repository to your computer.

Publishing

  • Web server, web host: The computer that hands your pages to visitors. It might be yours, or one you rent.

  • Domain: Your site's name on the web, like example.org.

  • SSH: A secure way to connect to a server from your computer, used to copy files to it.

  • Container: A packaged-up program that runs the same way anywhere, used by many hosting platforms.

  • Pipeline, CI: Steps your git platform runs by itself when something changes, such as checking and publishing your site.