The Blurb

WebMake is a simple content management system, based around a templating system for HTML documents, with lots of built-in smarts about what a "typical" informational website needs in the way of functionality; metadata, sitemapping, navigational aids, and (of course) embedded perl code. ;)

• Creates portable sites: It requires no dynamic scripting capabilities on the server; WebMake sites can be deployed to a plain old FTP site without any problems.
• No need to edit lots of files: A multi-level website can be generated entirely from 1 WebMake file containing content, links to content files, perl code (if needed), and output instructions.
• Useful for team work: Since the file-to-page mapping is no longer required, WebMake allows the separation of responsibilities between the content editors, the HTML page designers, and the site architect. Only the site architect needs to edit the WebMake file itself, or know perl or WebMake code. Standard file access permissions can be used to restrict editing by role.
• Efficient: WebMake supports dependency checking, so a one-line change to one source file will not regenerate your entire site -- unless it's supposed to. Only the files that refer to that chunk of content, however indirectly, will be modified.
• Supports content conversion, on the fly: Text can be edited as standard HTML, converted from plain text (see below), or converted from any other format by adding a conversion method to the WebMake::FormatConvert module.

• Edit text as text, not as HTML: One of the built-in content conversion modules is Text::EtText, which provides an easy-to-edit, easy-to-read and intuitive way to write HTML, based on the plain-text markup conventions we've been using for years.

• Rearrange your site in 30 seconds: Since URLs can be referred to symbolically, pages can be moved around and URLs changed by changing just one line. All references to that URL will then change automatically. This is vaguely Xanalogical.

• Scriptable: Content items and output URLs can be generated, altered, or read in dynamically using perl code. Perl code can even be used to generate other perl code to generate content/output URLs/etc., recursively. New tags can be defined and interpreted in perl.
• Extensible: New tags (for use in content items or in the WebMake file itself) can be added from perl code, providing what amounts to a dynamically-loaded plugin API.
• Inclusion of text: Content can incorporate other content items, simply by referring to it's name. This is a form of Xanadu-style transclusion.
• Edit content in your web browser: WebMake now includes webmake.cgi, which provides a CGI front-end to editing and managing a WebMake site.
• Site replication: with webmake.cgi's CVS integration, multiple copies of the same site can be replicated, and changes made on any of the sites will be automatically replicated to all the others.
• Version control: changes made to sites using webmake.cgi will be kept under CVS version control, so older versions of the site can be "rolled back" if necessary.

But enough of the bulleted lists. Here's where you should start:

• First of all, read WebMake Concepts for a quick intro to the assumptions and concepts that are used in WebMake.
• Next, read WebMake Operation for an overview of how WebMake operates.
• Then, read How To Migrate to WebMake for a guide to bringing an existing, simple web site into WebMake.
• After that, you just need to read the rest of the manual, which is mostly reference text. Good luck!