Temaki

Temaki is an experimental content management system for building and managing content for statically generated websites.

The project explores a structured-content approach: define reusable document templates, group documents into collections, edit content through generated forms, and render Markdown as HTML. It was developed as a prototype in 2011–2012 and is preserved here as a historical project rather than a production-ready CMS.

What it does

• Organizes content into named collections
• Defines reusable templates with embedded field definitions
• Generates document forms from template fields
• Supports text, textarea, checkbox, select, and markup fields
• Provides a MarkItUp-based Markdown editor and preview
• Renders stored Markdown to HTML with BlueCloth
• Tracks document creation and update timestamps
• Paginates collection and document listings

Content model

Collection
  └── uses one or more Templates
        └── defines Fields
              └── shapes Documents

The data layer uses Mongoid. DataCollection groups content, DataTemplate embeds its field definitions, and DataDocument stores the values entered through the generated form.

Technology

• Ruby on Rails 3.1
• MongoDB with Mongoid 2.3
• jQuery and jQuery UI
• MarkItUp with Markdown support
• BlueCloth for Markdown rendering
• Kaminari for pagination
• Sass and CoffeeScript through the Rails asset pipeline

Running the historical prototype

This application targets a 2011-era Ruby and Rails stack. Modern Ruby, MongoDB, and Bundler releases may not be compatible without upgrading the dependencies and configuration.

To run it in a compatible environment:

bundle install

export MONGOID_HOST=localhost
export MONGOID_PORT=27017
export MONGOID_DATABASE=temaki_development
export TEMAKI_SECRET_TOKEN="$(ruby -rsecurerandom -e 'puts SecureRandom.hex(64)')"

bundle exec rake db:seed
bundle exec rails server

Then open http://localhost:3000.

MongoDB authentication can be supplied with MONGOID_USERNAME and MONGOID_PASSWORD. Production uses the same environment variables and requires TEMAKI_SECRET_TOKEN.

Project status

Temaki is an archived prototype. Its useful ideas are the schema-driven editor, reusable content templates, and separation between structured content and final HTML rendering. It does not include a modern static-site export pipeline, authentication flow, automated deployment, or support for current Rails versions.

If reviving the project, start by upgrading Rails and Mongoid, replacing the legacy editor, adding tests and authentication, and implementing an explicit filesystem or deployment adapter for generated sites.