Since I wanted to change the layout, and it has gotten a bit annoying to do that by hand, I decided to create a simple script, called website2go that would enable me to continue creating the site as I have so far, with the added benefit of automatic page generation

So far, I've maintained my website as individual html pages, edited with a text editor. Some of the reasons for this, I've documented some of my experiences and wishes before. What it boils down to right now is:

• header, footle and page title of my site are to be automatically generated
• With the remainder of the page, I want to be able to have a flexible layout
• the remainder of the page contains mostly basic html, so I want to edit html directly
• I want links to other websites automatically generated from a list of favourite sites, like I do for my weblog
• as I'm automating stuff anyway, I'd like to add an RSS feed to the site as well
• a way to easily incorporate script-generated content
• the ability to easily undo changes
• being able to easily use existing tools such as text-editors, scripts, version control system and html validators
• The ability to easily add metadata as time goes by

Where it goes from there, I'll see. Some of my friends are having the same problems as I have, so this might evolve into a simple solution to maintain one person consultancy-firm websites. The system will depend heavily on other open source stuff like Ruby and Subversion, so if there is interest from others, I might open source it. I just noticed a blog entry by Martin Fowler, open source research that captures some of the spirit in which website2go is developed

a fair number of them are taking an idea and programming around it to see where it goes and whether it has value. That's a notion that sounds strange if you believe that design and programming are separated, but makes a lot of sense if you accept that they are tied together [....] A successful R&D isn't measured by what proportion of their ideas turn into products, but rather by how many great products they generate and how great they are. Someone who starts three projects and turns them all into mediocre products isn't as good as someone who starts a dozen projects and turns only one of them into a killer app.

I wrote the first screen of code today, and hope to keep notes on the development in the new category Nimble Programming.