'Blop' is a small *sh script by Drew/uoou/friendo.
It is a sort-of 'static site generator'. I came across it when looking into things like Hugo and Jekyll (neither of which I ended up trying, so my only experience with 'static site generators' is blob), through a video by HexDSL on 'workflow'.
It seems like the opinion on markdown across gemini is mixed, but, as a non-technical person, I love writing in markdown, especially in conjunction with pandoc. It feels so powerful and simple.
So, the blop script seemed perfect. I could just write everything in markdown and the script would do the rest.
But, then I realised it does so much more than that! It automatically updates an rss feed (I hated doing that), and it allows me to only have to edit a couple of html files if I'm making changes across the whole site.
I'm sure there were already so many ways to do all of these things automatically anyway, but I really love the simplicity and elegance of a short shell script that can do everything.
The instructions on gitlab are also super-clear and easy to follow. It didn't take long at all to switch my entire site over to this method. I really appreciate all the time and effort that went into the script and to these instructions.
In short, thank you Drew/uoou/friendo for the great work!