Chivo originally started as a Rails app to practice modern Rails frontend development. I wanted to try out Hotwire and all that jazz, and I liked it. The problem was, I had no business trying to build my portfolio CMS on Rails.

Going on one

I wanted to get back to what I originally liked doing, HTML/CSS, and sometimes some Javascript. I really began to dig projects like 11ty and Astro, and have started to reach to those for any non-platform specific project.

While working with these site generators, I realized how much I wanted to make them mine. Then I remembered this Gulp-based script I had used as a boilerplate for client work. Getting it up and running after years and years of neglect, a fool's errand.

I tried, it did fail. It was nice to work with some old custom tooling that I used to rely on and almost have it working the way it should.

All this to say, Chivo is the successor to these two concepts into something new, an opinionated site builder based around my idea of simplicity.

Core concepts

• A folder with images is enough. - Files should sort of live on their own and not really need an index.html|.md|.idk to format things all the time. Sometimes, a basic image is all that you need because you know the website will handle it.
• Metadata is optional. - Okay, so the first point has shortcomings, so instead of the idea of frontmatter, I like the idea of a configurable json file for that stuff.
• Trust the Cascade - Chivo is built around the cascade, because that's what CSS was made for. Plus, I was inspired by CSS Zen Garden from back in the day.

Building in Public

I am in the process of converting some simple sites I've built to use Chivo to work out the kinks. I am mostly creating the first blog post for the main Chivo website that will serve as the guiding light for how I want to make websites.

Onward

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