Essays
A Study in Static
Every site has two natures. The one you write, and
the one you ship. Hyde keeps them in the same file.
The experiment
- One Markdown file
- One build command
- Zero servers to keep alive
Since 2022 · Open source · MIT
The static site generator for PHP.
The power of Laravel meets the simplicity of Markdown.
Transform your ideas into blazing-fast websites. Combine the power of Laravel's ecosystem with the simplicity of Markdown. Your next project starts here.
DRAG THE SEAM ⟷ TO BUILD
The transformation
The whole workflow is three moves. What comes out is plain HTML you can host anywhere, from a five-dollar VPS to a free static hosting provider.
Markdown for content, Blade when you want full control. Front matter for any metadata.
// Or create plain .md, your call $ php hyde make:post "Hello World"
One command compiles everything: pages, posts, docs, navigation, RSS, sitemap.
$ php hyde serve // Preview live $ php hyde build // Website build
The output is a folder of static files. No PHP on the server, nothing to patch at 2 am.
_site/ ├── posts/ ├── index.html └── feed.xml
Four kinds of pages
The directory a file lives in decides what it becomes. Mix and choose between them freely. Hyde works out the routing, the navigation, and the layouts.
_pages/*.md
The shortest path to a page. Write the content, keep the file, get static HTML.
_pages/*.blade.php
For the pages Markdown can't carry. Full control over the markup, with PHP at hand.
_posts/*.md
A blog that assembles itself. Drop the file in, and the feeds follow along.
_docs/*.md
A whole documentation site from a folder of Markdown. It doesn't get better than this.
What's in the box
Hyde is built on Laravel Zero. If you know Artisan and Blade you already know Hyde, and if you don't, Markdown is all you need to get a site out the door.
Mix Markdown pages and Blade views freely in the same project. Sprinkle in YAML front matter when a page needs metadata, skip it when it doesn't. Hyde's magic does its best to configure your site for you.
--- navigation: priority: 1 ---
Ships with a full Tailwind frontend, responsive navigation, dark mode, and customizable Blade components. Publish the templates when you want to make it yours. Or easily toss them in favour of your own design system.
php hyde publish views
Drop Markdown files in a folder and get a searchable docs site with an automatically built sidebar. The HydePHP documentation site is powered by HydePHP and we wouldn't want it any other way.
_docs/ ├── index.md └── getting-started.md
No database means your whole site lives in Git. Content, config, and templates travel together, and every deploy is reproducible from a single commit.
git push # That's the deploy
"I'm not a PHP developer and I can barely write a function in this language, but the project actually delivers on what it promises. Docs: 10/10. Project: 10/10."
Begin the experiment