THE INFINITE ARCHIVE

This page describes, at a high level, how Ordinal turns a single Markdown file into a finished page on the site. It is meant as a quick reference and conceptual overview.

A more detailed breakdown lives in the Ordinal article itself.

If revision tracking is enabled, the same process also records things like word counts, worked hours, and content drift.

Frontmatter is the metadata at the top of a Markdown file. It controls how an entry is presented, categorized, and indexed.

Common fields include:

title, description

Used for page titles, summaries, and meta tags.

domain, division

Used to group related entries and build indexes.

created, last_modified

Shown in the page metadata. last_modified is updated automatically when the page is regenerated.

worked

Hours logged for the entry. Used for tracking effort over time.

template

Which HTML template the page is rendered through. Defaults to wiki.html.

Optional fields such as tags, series, location, or media references may be present. Fields that are not used by the system are simply ignored.

The Markdown body is cleaned up and reshaped before it is rendered.

Footnotes are pulled out and turned into anchored references.

Basic Markdown elements like quotes, lists, tables, and emphasis are converted into HTML.

Images and videos are detected from standard Markdown syntax. If no header image is specified, the first media item may be used as a fallback.

Internal links written as [[slug]] are resolved and recorded for backlink generation.

The author writes plain Markdown, and Ordinal handles the rest.

Headings are collected to build a table of contents based on their level.

The body is also split into logical article blocks that the template uses to control layout and spacing. This allows presentation to be adjusted without changing the original writing.

Media is discovered automatically from the site's image and video directories.

Entries are associated with media by matching filenames referenced in frontmatter or body content. The media rail surfaces recent or relevant assets without requiring manual effort.