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    rynz

    Markdown in. Plain HTML out.

    rynz 2.0 turns a folder of Markdown files into a fast website. No JavaScript, no tracking, no build chain: install it, run three commands, and upload the HTML anywhere.

    pip install rynz
rynz new my-site
cd my-site && rynz serve

    Start a site Read the source

    Features

    Start a site in a minute

    1. Install rynz. It needs Python 3.10 or newer.

      pip install rynz

    2. Create a site. You get a config file, a home page, an about page and a sample post.

      rynz new my-site --title "My site" --url https://example.com

    3. Preview it at http://127.0.0.1:5555. Save a file and refresh to see the change.

      cd my-site
rynz serve

    4. Build it. The finished site is in public/, ready to upload.

      rynz build

    Write a post

    rynz add "Why I self-host"

    This creates content/note/why-i-self-host.md. The lines between the --- markers are the frontmatter: settings for this page. Everything below them is your post.

    ---
title: "Why I self-host"
description: "One box, no subscriptions."
date: 2026-10-05
tags: [note, homelab]
draft: true
---

Start writing here.

    A file tagged note is a post: it is listed on the home page and in the feed. A file without that tag is a page, like an About page. Only title is required.

    Field What it does
    date, updated When it was published and last changed
    tags Tags; note makes it a post
    draft Leave it out of rynz build
    slug Change the file name in the URL
    template Use a different template for this page
    image Picture for social previews
    aliases Old URLs that should redirect here
    toc Show a table of contents
    noindex, nofeed Hide it from search engines or from the feed

    Commands

    Command What it does
    rynz new my-site Start a new site in my-site/
    rynz add "Title" Create a new post as a draft
    rynz serve Preview at 127.0.0.1:5555, rebuilding on save. -p 8080 picks another port
    rynz build Build into public/. Add --drafts, --incremental or --check
    rynz check Find broken links, missing titles and images without alt text
    rynz config Print every setting with its default, and check for mistakes
    rynz migrate Upgrade a rynz 1.x config.yml, keeping your comments
    rynz init-ci gitlab Write a deploy file for gitlab, cloudflare or rsync

    Configuration

    A site needs two lines of config.yml. Everything else has a sensible default.

    title: My site
url: https://example.com

    When you want more, it reads like a sentence:

    menu:
  - name: about
    url: /about.html
urls: clean          # /about.html is linked as /about
tags: true           # a page per tag
archive: true        # posts grouped by year
markdown:
  highlight:
    style: monokai   # any Pygments style
    urls: File written Link
    flat (default) about.html /about.html
    clean about.html /about
    pretty about/index.html /about/

    Templates and themes

    rynz looks for each template in three places, in order:

    1. your template/ folder
    2. the theme named in config.yml
    3. rynz's built-in templates

    To change one thing, copy just that template into template/ and edit it. Templates are Jinja2 and can use page.title, page.html, page.toc, page.reading_time, site.posts, site.tags, site.data and everything in config.

    The tabs at the top of this page are a working example. The same HTML is built five times, and each copy links a different stylesheet.

    Plugins

    A plugin is a Python file with a register function. List it under plugins: in config.yml.

    def register(rynz):
    @rynz.generator
    def humans(site, render):
        yield "humans.txt", f"Written by {site.config['author']}\n"

    @rynz.hook("html")
    def mark_todos(html, page, site):
        return html.replace("TODO", "<mark>TODO</mark>")
    Hook Runs
    config after config.yml is read
    page after a page's frontmatter is read
    html after Markdown becomes HTML
    site after posts and tags are collected
    context before a page's template renders
    done after every file is written

    rynz's own feed, sitemap, tag pages, archive, redirects, blogroll and Gemini output are built with this same API. So are this site's theme tabs: plugins/themes.py is about 20 lines.

    Check before you publish

    rynz check reads the built site the way a visitor would and reports what's wrong. rynz build --check does both in one step, so a broken link fails your deploy instead of reaching readers.

    $ rynz check
warning: note/hello.html: image without alt text: /img/desk.jpg
error: about.html: broken link: /contact.html
error: note/hello.html: anchor #setup not found on this page
error: checked 14 pages: 2 errors, 1 warnings

    Deploy anywhere

    rynz init-ci writes a ready-made deploy file. Each one runs rynz build --check first.

    Where Command
    GitLab Pages rynz init-ci gitlab
    Cloudflare Workers rynz init-ci cloudflare
    Your own server rynz init-ci rsync

    Or skip them all: public/ is plain files, so any web host works.

    Upgrading from 1.x

    Your 1.x site builds with 2.0 as it is. rynz prints a list of the old config keys it found. When you're ready, run rynz migrate: it renames them, keeps your comments and saves a backup.

    Built with rynz

    Built something with rynz? Open an issue and it can be listed here.

    News