Glossary
View SourceThis page provides two lists of terms — one for Griffin-specific terminology that may be useful for when building out a project using Griffin, and one for industry jargon that may be useful for understanding context.
Griffin-Specific Terminology
Template
A content file written in a format such as Markdown, HTML, HEEx or Liquid, which Griffin transforms into one or more pages in the built site. Templates can access data exposed through the data cascade with templating syntax.
Layout
A template which wraps around another template, typically to provide the scaffolding markup for content to sit in.
Read more about using layouts.
Data
Exposed via variables that can be used inside templates and layouts using templating syntax. The data for a given template is aggregated through a process called the data cascade.
Data Cascade
Griffin's order of operations for evaluating all data for any given template, and for resolving conflicts that arise. The data cascade follows the principle of colocation, so data defined broadly to apply to many templates will be overruled by data that targets the given template more specifically.
Filter
A function which can be used within templating syntax to transform data into a more presentable format. Filters are typically designed to be chained, so that the value returned from one filter is piped into the next filter.
Shortcode
A function which can be used within templating syntax to inject content into templates. Shortcodes can take many arguments, and can be thought of as a templating approach to reusable markup.
Collection
An array of templates, used to group similar content. Collections can be created by using tags or by calling the collections API in the Griffin configuration.
Industry Terms and Buzzwords
Our industry can be particularly bad about inventing words for things that already exist. Hopefully this page will help you navigate the labyrinth.
Static Sites
A static site is a group of generated HTML files. Content is built into the HTML files rather than using a dynamic back end language to generate the content on-the-fly. A dynamic site can appear static when you add caching rules to make the content stickier. A static site can appear dynamic when you run your build quickly and often.
Data-Driven
Make components and markup data-driven so that you don’t have a bunch of one-off copy-pasted HTML instances littered throughout your project.
Zero Config
Zero config means that Griffin can run without any command line parameters or configuration files.
We’ve taken care to setup Griffin so that that running the stock grf.build
command uses sensible defaults. Lower the barrier to entry for that first project build to get up and running faster.
Convention over Configuration Routing
Instead of requiring a centralized configuration file for routing, Griffin
routes map the file system, unless you override with a permalink
.