---
title: Soupboat CMS 00
description: Micro JSON→HTML CMS for the first trimester
cover: cms00.jpg
cover_alt: Notebook drawing of a dog saying dog and a Microsoft clipper saying pig with ancient hieroglyphs
date: 24/12/2021
git: https://git.xpub.nl/kamo/kamo-soupbato
project: cms00
categories:
 - CMS
 - JS
---

## A micro CMS

During the first weeks at XPUB I spent some time trying to figure out how to archive and log the various projects going on. I felt to do it here in the Soupboat, because it's more flexible and playful than the wiki, that remains of course the source of truth and the future-proof archiving system etc. etc. 👹👺

After the second page though I was already ultra annoyed by the fact of rewriting or copy-pasting the HTML from a page to the other to keep at least a bit of style and structure and add contents manually. I wrote then a bit of code to have a default page and then used a JSON file filled with a list of projects. The script traversed this list and created a table with the basic informations about each one.

The model for a project was something like that:

```json
{
    "title": "Text Weaving",
    "date": "Oct 5, 2021",
    "url": "10-05-2021-weaving/",
    "git": "https://git.xpub.nl/kamo/text_weaving",
    "pad": "https://pad.xpub.nl/p/replacing_cats",
    "links": [
        {
            "url": "",
            "title": "",
        }
    ],
    "categories": [
        "Python",
        "NLTK",
        "Text"
    ]
},
```

Each proj has a title, a date, an URL to a dedicated page. Then a list of links: the git repository for sharing the source code and the pad, that are the two most common types of link, and then a list of generic other links, each one composed by an URL and a title. There is also a list of categories, in order to give some hints about the project.

The dedicated page for a project could have been something somewhere in the Soupboat, or a subfolder in my personal folder.

The structure of the whole thing was: an `index.html` page with a `cms.js` script and a `cms.json` file. (Such imagination in these filenames). Then a `style.css` and a `global.css` for sharing the style with the various projects.

Not really a revolutionary CMS but a starting point. Ah ah

I'm writing this while im migrating everything into a flask based one, that will use more or less the same structure we developed for the SI16! Really happy with it. Good night