WordTrove
Static word-finder site: 3–8 letter finders, word unscrambler, daily 5 letter puzzle, ~290 word-list pages, plus an llms.txt / Markdown layer for AI search. No framework, no database.
Run it locally for testing
The site/ folder is a complete prebuilt site, so you can test without building. Serve it over HTTP — opening index.html directly with file:// will not work, because the pages use absolute paths (/style.css, /data/5.txt) and the tools fetch() their word lists.
cd site
python -m http.server 8788
Then open http://localhost:8788/. Any static server works equally well (npx serve site, php -S localhost:8788 -t site).
What to check:
| Page | What should happen |
|---|
/ | Type letters into the green boxes — the list narrows as you type, the meter shows the % ruled out, and a "best next guess" line appears |
/word-unscrambler/ | PLANETS is prefilled; results group by length. Try ? for a blank tile |
/daily-word-puzzle/ | Six-row board, on-screen keyboard and physical typing both work; reload mid-game and your guesses come back |
/5-letter-words-starting-with-a/ | Full list with scores; the "open this pattern in the finder" link prefills the first box |
/data/5.txt | Plain space-separated word list (served from /data/, cached a week by _headers) |
Two notes on the dev server: unknown URLs return the server's own 404 rather than site/404/index.html (only the real host uses that), and _headers is ignored, so caching and Markdown content types can only be verified after deploy.
Rebuild from source
cd source
python3 build.py # -> source/out/site (copy over site/ to promote it)
python3 build.py --preview # -> source/out/preview
Preview mode writes flat .html files with relative links, so it opens straight from the filesystem without a server — handy for a quick look, but it skips the Markdown layer and uses different URLs than production.
Needs Python 3 and the Hunspell en_US dictionary (sudo apt install hunspell-en-us). The build is Linux-only: it reads /usr/share/hunspell/en_US.{aff,dic} by absolute path and uses a glibc-only date format, so it fails on Windows and macOS. Use the prebuilt site/ folder there, or build inside WSL or a container.
Deploy (free)
Upload the site/ folder to Cloudflare Pages or Netlify (drag-and-drop works). _headers sets caching, Markdown content types and canonical headers. 404.html is picked up automatically.
Change name, domain, analytics, ads
Edit CONFIG at the top of source/build.py and rebuild.
The Markdown/llms.txt layer is regenerated only when the SEO suite is available (env var SEO_SUITE); otherwise copy site/llms.txt, site/sitemap.md and site/llm/ from this zip and update the domain inside them.
After launch
- Confirm the domain is yours and not taken; set SITE_URL.
- Add the site to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools; submit /sitemap.xml.
- Set GA4_ID and rebuild.
- When traffic grows, apply to AdSense or Ezoic; paste their script into ADS_HEAD and their lines into site/ads.txt, and turn on the
.ad slots in style.css.
work/ holds the private research and audit notes (keyword research, keyword map, AEO/GEO findings). Never upload it.
