Have you ever looked for a way to quickly build a live prototype as a static site that nevertheless had some sensible version control and had potential for future extension? Well, I have a template (complete with very minimal HTML5 boilerplate) for you [right here][1]! Read on for details.

After recently experimenting with CoffeeScript (and loving it), I felt the need to stage some code quickly somewhere. I already had my computer setup for deployment to Heroku so that was the obvious choice, and a quick search on the interwebz meant that my static sites could now run on Heroku easily. The upside was that I could add a lot of complexity to such a website down the road with minimal hassle. Basically, in the future I could build on it as a Rack-based app or use one of the many easy Ruby frameworks that are Rack-based (like Sinatra). Also, it would mean that I would use Git from the very start of the process, adding some much needed version control to the early stages of prototypes.

So, I basically extracted the basic code into a template, and even added a branch for Sass and Coffeescript enthusiasts to have a base to build on. I included some simple commands that free you up from the terminal so you can still have the familiar edit/refresh development cycle with the convenience of Coffee/Sass.

Here’s the main branch: https://github.com/gnarmis/staticRack

Here’s the sassycoffee branch: https://github.com/gnarmis/staticRack/tree/sassycoffee

Clone the branch you want, customize, and push to Heroku. Enjoy!