Hitop, for utter fools. Like me.

What isn't it?

A strange title to start with, perhaps, but first I have to clear up a little misconception. Hitop is not an HTML editor or creator. Hitop will not take your text and make a web page out of it, unless you tell it how. So you do need to know HTML. Sorry.

What is it?

Hitop is a HTML pre-processor, at it's most basic. It will make your life easier when designing websites, updating them, and just generally maintaining them. You can apply a design change across a whole website in seconds, and enable your users to navigate through the site more easily.

But hitop can do much more - it isn't just a templating tool, it will allow you to call procedures, serve webpages on the fly... It's dead exciting. No, really.

And, amazingly for something so powerful, it's easy to get started with. If you can hand code (or write, or mark, or whatever) HTML, you'll be able to get started with hitop.

How do I get it?

Hitop source can be downloaded from the official hitop website, http://www.hitop.org which also contains some reference files. I have no idea how to compile it, this guide is designed for people who already have hitop installed on a machine. Mostly, it's aimed at people who use fof...

How do I use it?

Read this guide. :) You can also check out the excellent guides written by Andrew Bowden, over at Planet Bods. This guide owes a lot to that one, (blatant plagiarism, for example...) so be sure to check it out.