Liquid Templates

GenGen uses Liquid as its templating language. Pages, layouts, and includes can mix Markdown with Liquid variables, filters, and tags.

Rendering Order

GenGen renders Liquid before Markdown conversion. This lets Liquid output Markdown that will be converted into HTML.

If you need to show Liquid syntax literally in a page, wrap it in a raw block or set render_with_liquid: false in the page front matter.

Core Concepts

• {{ ... }} outputs data such as page.title or site.posts.

• {% ... %} executes logic like for, if, include, or custom GenGen tags.

• Drops like page and site expose structured metadata from your content.

Includes & Components

Store reusable fragments under _includes/ and render them with:

{% render 'components/callout', variant: 'info', title: 'Heads up!' %}
  Content goes here.
{% endrender %}

Shortcodes

Shortcodes are a thin wrapper around {% render %} that make embeds easier to write in Markdown and Liquid templates.

Markdown

Use shortcodes inside Markdown content:

[ shortcode 'partials/media/youtube' id='VIDEO_ID' width='560' height='315' ]

Liquid

Use the Liquid tag directly in templates:

{% shortcode 'partials/media/youtube' id='VIDEO_ID' width='560' height='315' %}

Attributes

Attributes accept single or double quotes and either = or : separators:

[ shortcode "partials/media/twitter" url="https://twitter.com/..." width=560 ]
{% shortcode 'partials/media/twitter' url:'https://twitter.com/...' %}

Custom Filters & Tags

GenGen ships a set of built-in Liquid tags and filters. Lua plugins can also register custom Liquid filters via liquid_filters (see the Plugins guide). If you need new Liquid tags, add them to the GenGen codebase (or open an issue so we can document the extension point).