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What is it?
kiki is a homepage building kit written with the tomotama design philosophy . It's built so that if something looks wrong, you can change it yourself without spending hours reading tutorials and watching coding videos. You can take it for a test drive on the demo site. Or just browse around here - tomotama.com runs on kiki too!Download & Purchase
kiki is distributed via itch.io - you can download the shareware edition and purchase the full version here.
How is kiki Different?
The source code is ~1500 lines of code (
* 5 built-in easy to modify, responsive themes.
* a public wiki mode.
* a live/dynamic site mode.
* a static site generation mode.
* preliminary support for gopher holes.
* a simple markup language called Bug.
* plug-in support for Markdown.
* assistive/screen reader friendly output.
* RSS and HTML generation.
* richly commented and moddable source.
* interactive help & documentation.
* dynamic and static page generation.
* 100% handwritten PHP, HTML and CSS.
* javascript.
* external libraries/dependencies.
* cookies or tracking data.
* bloat: it's less than 100 kilobytes total.
* ML-generated trashcode.
* database structures.
* anything to install; just unzip it.
* social media crud & commenting.
* self-update nagging.
"But what about CMS packages like Ghost and static site generators like 11ty and Jekyll and and ..."
look: Jekyll and 11ty and Ghost and so on are still built around the core belief that everyone should learn how to use Node.js or Ruby and update weekly library packages just to get to Hello, World. If you're into that kind of thing, there are plenty of website generators already out there for you.
kiki was built around the idea that the web took a wrong turn a couple of decades ago. HTML was supposed to be simple and straightforward enough that everyday people could create a website in just a few minutes. It's structured so you don't need to spend hours deciding whether or not your templates should be built with JS or Liquid or Mustache.
It's for people who already have a web host somewhere, and want to put up a site fast, so they can have fun doing other things.
License
kiki is shareware. It's free to use in unpaid mode, and costs only $15 CAD (~$11 USD) for the full edition.The paid/full version gets you access to all five themes, built-in support for markdown, public wiki mode, and my blessing to remove the shareware link from the footer of each page.
Don't want to pay for it? Under the shareware license, you just leave the footer unchanged, so other folks can learn about kiki.
The shareware edition's source code is freely shareable in its original unmodified form under the Creative Commons CC-BY-ND-NC license. (In english: you can share as many copies of the original source code as you like, as long as it is unmodified, maintains attribution to tomotama, and isn't being re-badged or re-sold.)
Yes, you absolutely can use and modify kiki for business activities like building your game company website, but you just can't distribute or re-sell it as your own software product.
Requirements
* A web server (or computer for static generation) running PHP 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, 7.x, 8.x. with mbstring extension enabled.* Your favourite text editor.
Optional
* Apache .htaccess or nginx server configuration modifications for "SEO-friendly" permalinks.* Markdown and other PHP-based markup languages can be installed as plug-ins.