Using Grav with my existing notes

Hi all

I’m totally new with Grav, just tried it during hours without finding what I’m looking for, therefore this post.

Since years, I’m using Markdown for my notes. I’ve a /notes folder on my disk and their sub-folders (many levels). One subfolder for work (/notes/work) for instance, one other for home (/notes/home), … and in each folder, subfolders. Nothing special here I think.

In my folders, I’ve one or more notes; called readme.md but also garden.md, car.md, … and sometimes I don’t have a .md at all. In the /home/family folder f.i. I can have only subfolders but no note in that folder.

My wish / dream: can I copy all my /notes folder under /user/pages/notes and just add a notes entry in the Administration of Grav and mention that this entry is a blog. Nothing more…

The idea is that Grav will process any .md files there and will make possible to see the list of files, navigate between subfolders, click on a note and see it.

Actually, I’ve tried during hours and not really find how to do this…

It seems that if I’ve a file called car.md I need a template car.html.twig otherwise I got an error. Is there any “undefined” template i.e. doesn’t care about the name of the note, using a default template.

Also, if I’ve a folder without .md files, I’ve an error too when trying to see it through the blog page of Grav. In my case, I don’t want an error, just the list of files below; in all subfolders.

Another thing: Grav is adding files (like blog.en.md) in my structure or, even, modify my notes by adding a yaml block. If possible I wish to avoid this: Grav will display my notes and don’t change anything in my /notes folder. Leave my folders and notes as is. If custom files should be created, is it possible to do it in a temporary or config folder f.i. (idea is not to change my files neither my folders).

Many thanks by advance

Christophe

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Hi Christophe,
You could do this - but not quite how you think, and it would be easier to use the admin to add a post. Every post has to go in a folder - and the folder carries the name of the post. The .md document in each folder would only have the name of the template you’d want to user, normally item.md in a blog.

Reorganising all your notes may well be more trouble than it’s worth - you’d have to change the structure. Ideally I guess it would be one containing folder only, let’s say notes. Then all your notes within that, separated into your preferred sections via the taxonomy (category and tag) rather than via subfolders.

This is a screenshot from my shop site - each painting uses an ‘item’ template, with the file name as the folder name, and the .md file always called item.md