Main files

By now you know that you have to setup the project folders. The build folder also must be present. You also would have known how to write the project instructions in the project file. And you also should have an overview on how the generation of the website generally happens.

All the main files used by FillPouch has an extension of ".sd". These are read from the "file" instruction in the project file.

The simplest way to understand FillPouch is to simply start writing contents in a text editor without caring much about HTML or anything. Each .sd file that you create in such a fashion would be eventually be transformed into a full .html in your site.

The file index.sd is important
Start a file named "index.sd" and place it in the root folder of your project. This is the file, that gets converted to "index.html" once the site is built by FillPouch. This file must always exist, else most web servers will find it difficult to automatically create the first page of your website. Ideally, you should also write the "file(...)" instruction in the project file which points to this file.

If you do not write such a file(...) instruction, then that file is termed "unlisted". FillPouch will process unlisted files too; but such files cannot participate in auto-links. Neither can they be cloned.

At the simplest level, it is a raw HTML system!
FillPouch will simply take each of the .sd files described by the "file" instructions in the project file. Each of those files MUST reside in the www folder (root folder) or beneath, and work on them to understand the meta-instructions therein, and create the final file in the same respective folder in the build folder and rename it to .html.

If you do NOT give any meta-instruction in any of the .sd files, then you would end up doing the same work as a regular HTML website. Obviously if you do it this way, you are not taking any advantage of Fillpouch!

It may sound strange, but you can actually start like this. Later you can decide that some part of those files are to be kept as a fragment above the www folder (i.e. above the root, into its parent) and you insert a "pouch" meta-instruction where the fragment once was.

Main files must be described in the Project file!
All such main .sd files that would be residing in the 'www' (root folder) and sub-folders beneath it, must be available using the "file(...)" instruction in the main Project file. Those file(...) instructions would be used by FillPouch to know that they should eventually result in an html file in the build folder. FillPouch would also prepare itself to to take care of "pouch" meta-instructions in those files, as it proceeds with such files.

How to divide and conquer?
We told you you can apply reductionism (divide-n-conquer) on your site, and do "chunks" of work separately. For example you can start thinking only about the contents. Or you can first start thinking only about the HTML structure.