README

learnsanskrit.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Source code for `learnsanskrit.org`.


Audience
--------

`learnsanskrit.org` is the top result on Google for "learn sanskrit" and
similar queries. Here is an approximate traffic breakdown by locale:

- India: 55%
- United States: 20%
- United Kingdom and Canada: 5%

Leaving aside tools, our most popular content is our beginner-friendly grammar
guide. Based on our analytics and the emails we receive from readers, our
community is primarily one of "informal learners" who study outside of a
traditional or university setting.


Technical design
----------------

`learnsanskrit.org` is served as a static website. Static websites are fast,
stable, and don't require any monitoring, so they're perfect for a project like
ours.

Internally, the site is a Flask app and has access to normal Flask features. At
deployment time, however, we use `flask-freeze` to convert all output to flat
files.

All of the site content is written in SML, a custom markup language that is
lightweight and simple. For details, see `lso/sml`.


Directories
-----------

    api                         # All logic related to the API
    build                       # Output directory when freezing
        sml                     # Markup language implementation
        static                  # Static resources
        templates               # HTML templates
        view                    # Routes and view logic
    content                     # /guide and /vyakarana content
    data                        # various linguistic data
    lso                         # main application logic


Site commands
-------------

See `Makefile` for build, lint, and test commands.