Simple "server-side" HTML partials/templates/layouts?

Question

I'm working with two students to produce a few HTML pages (a homepage and two secondary page layouts) that will later be implemented into a larger CMS.

I'd like to be able to abstract the shared HTML (head metadata, primary navigation, footer, etc.) into separate files so we only have to update them in a single place, execute a shell command to generate new, complete output. Since these pages are only ever going to become templates for another team, I don't even need to integrate any external data sources.

I know Jade would work for this but our partials/layouts/whatever need to look like HTML. I keep coming back to precompiling Handlebars templates but I'm not having much luck getting them to work.

Since we're using Foundation 5, Ruby and Node are already part of our toolchain. Suggestions?

Answer 1

I really like Middleman for this kind of thing. Layouts and partials and local data, etc. Wonderfully useful for doing front-end prototyping for what will eventually become a Rails application.