Bestatic release v0.0.36

release-note major-release documentation

We are back with a new release of Bestatic. This release is a major release and it is essentially fully compatible with previous versions.

This is a relatively stable version that should work on both x86-64 and arm64 architectures, running Windows, macOS, or any standard Linux distribution. Of course, you can always install it inside any Python virtual environment, if you prefer that option.

IMPORTANT

The documentation for Bestatic has been completely updated and it is now available at the official website. This was a long overdue update and we are glad that it is finally here!!


New Features:

  • New GUI Installer for macOS: We have brand new GUI based .pkg installer for macOS (separate native packages for Intel and Apple Silicon). In proper Bestatic style, everything is included in a single-executable. Mac users no longer needs to tinker with homebrew/pipx/command line, if they choose not to (of course, CLI is still a valid installation option).

  • Customizable Port Number: During local testing, users can now specify their port number of choice via --portnumber or -nflag. Previously it was hard coded to 8080 (which is still the default, if that flag is not specified).

  • Miscellaneous keys can now be added to the bestatic.yaml config file (with extra_data key and any nested keys of choice ) and Bestatic will now pass it properly to the templates. This can be really valuable in generating second navigation bar.

  • Custom Data Handling: In addition to custom description of taxonomies (via _includes/yamls folder), Bestatic can now process user provided CSV and YAML data and pass the structured data theme templates. With proper themes, webpages can be generated with minimal markdown for repetitive/structured content.

  • Image Optimization module is now available in Bestatic out of the box. This is currently an experimental feature that can be used to optimize image size by automatically converting all images to .webp format. While this would make site builds a bit slower, especially for large images, it would make sites much faster to load.

  • A test Suite has been added to the codebase.

  • Linux users who prefer not to use flatpak or snap, can now use native linux installers. The install.sh and uninstall.sh are provided inside the tarball.

  • Version Updates: Majority of the Python packages have been updated to the newest version. Bestatic now supports Python 3.10-3.14 (all currently maintained Python versions). Since Python 3.8 and 3.9 are no longer supported, we need at least Python 3.10 to run Bestatic now. All prebuilt binaries are now built on Python 3.10.

  • New Themes: We have added two new themes to the themes repo: bestatic-lab-group and bestatic-lab-group-simple. These themes are designed for academic lab group websites and are currently being used in this website and this website. All other themes have been updated to use the new features as well.

Bug fixes:

  • Quickstart now works even it is tried with a theme other than "Amazing". Fixes issues #6 and #7.

  • Blog pagination has been fixed and more than one pages can be created (it broke during the last release).

  • Navigation can be correctly configured via Nav parameter, even if separate homepage template is used now.

Themes are available at the themes repo or directly from Bestatic themes listing page. Detailed documentation is available at the official website.

As usual, Bestatic can be downloaded and installed from the GitHub release page, or Snap store, or Flathub, or PyPI.

Changelog:

Full Changelog: On GitHub

As always, thank you very much for trying Bestatic. ❤️❤️