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Guide → Installation

Getting Started with Roe

How Roe works

Most website software, stores all your content in databases which are complex to set up and require specific software to edit. Roe doesn’t. It builds your website from simple files on your computer.

There are three kinds of files:

  • Markdown files contain your writing. They are written in a simple-to-learn formatting language called ‘markdown’ which lets you add headings, links, and images with ordinary characters — like *this* (here the asterisks turn “this” into an italic).
  • Media files are all the images, audio, and video you add to your site. These are ordinary jpg, mp3, gifs and so on.
  • Settings files are small files that tell Roe how your site should look and behave. For the most part you won’t have to worry about these, but they are easy to edit using Roe when you wish to change them.

If you know Markdown, you’ll feel at home right away. If you don’t, you can learn as you go. Create a post, make a change, and watch the live preview update. We’ll do this next. If you’d like a reference, keep a cheat sheet nearby.

How your site is organized

Roe sites have three main parts:

  • Navigation. Site title and links at the top of the site
  • Footer. Copyright notice and links at the bottom of the site.
    • both you can edit in Roe’s layouts section
  • Content. Which you edit in Roe’s pages and posts sections.

Building more advanced pages

Once you’re comfortable creating posts and pages, Roe can help you build richer layouts — still without writing code. For this it uses simple extensions of markdown called Roe-anji.

With Roe-anji you can add:

Roe-anji, like markdown, is very easy to learn, and just like markdown, you can learn as you go, which we’ll do now…