How to Keep Your JennaPress Site Updated — From One Language to Five

The previous article covered how to set up a JennaPress site using Fork and AI. This article explains how to continuously update your site and manage multilingual content correctly.

Editing Directly in the GitHub Browser

After forking, you need no local tools. GitHub provides a full in-browser editor.

Find the file you want to edit (for example content/pages/about.md), click it, then click the pencil icon to enter edit mode. Write a brief commit message at the bottom (such as “Update team section”), and click Commit.

Each commit triggers GitHub Actions, which automatically rebuilds and redeploys your site.

The Right Way to Use AI for Content Writing

When asking AI to write content, the key is giving clear context. Send this to ChatGPT:

I am using JennaPress CMS, a static-first multilingual website. Please help me write content following these rules. CONTENT_PROMPT_EN.md is as follows: [paste the full contents of CONTENT_PROMPT_EN.md].

Then tell AI exactly what you need:

• “Write a product introduction page”
• “Write three blog posts, categories: Project, Usage, Product Note”
• “Translate the homepage above into German and Spanish”

AI will generate properly formatted content. Your job is copy and paste only.

How to Add Multilingual Content Correctly

JennaPress supports five languages: English (default), German, Chinese, Greek, and Spanish.

Adding a New Language Page

For example, to create a German homepage:

1. Create a de/ subdirectory under content/pages/
2. Create index.md inside the de/ directory
3. Write it the same way as content/pages/index.md, but translate the content into German
4. Critical: the slug in the front matter must be exactly the same as the English version

Adding Multilingual Blog Posts

Blog posts follow the same pattern as pages.

To translate an English post content/posts/my-post.md into German:

1. Create a de/ subdirectory under content/posts/ (if it does not already exist)
2. Create my-post.md in the de/ directory (same filename as the English version)
3. The slug in front matter must remain my-post
4. Translate the content into German
5. The canonical field should point to the English version URL

Navigation Works Automatically Across Languages

You do not need to manually configure navigation menus for each language. JennaPress’s routing system automatically generates URLs for every supported language. The nav configuration in content/site.md applies to all language versions.

How to Update Site-Wide Settings in site.md

content/site.md controls global site configuration, including:

• Site name (name)
• Logo text (logoText)
• Default template (defaultTemplate)
• Theme settings (defaultTheme, themes)
• Navigation links (nav)
• Footer text (footerText)

When you change these fields, all language versions of all pages reflect the changes automatically.

Things to Watch Out For When Writing

Each page and blog post has a fixed front matter structure. These fields are the most commonly mistyped:

• slug must be unique and contain only lowercase letters and hyphens
• publishedAt must use ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD) and be wrapped in quotes
• canonical must include the full URL (with https://)
• Blog post category must be a recognized category already defined in the template

When AI generates content with the full CONTENT_PROMPT provided, these formats are automatically followed correctly.

When You Need to Change the Template

JennaPress supports multiple templates. When you want a different visual style, the prompt you give AI is TEMPLATE_PROMPT_EN.md (not CONTENT_PROMPT).

Describe the style you want and AI will generate a new template package. You only need to place the files in templates/ and change defaultTemplate in content/site.md to the new template name.

Summary

The complete update workflow requires no technical background:

• Write content: let AI generate it following CONTENT_PROMPT
• Change the look: let AI generate a template following TEMPLATE_PROMPT
• Change site settings: edit content/site.md directly
• Commit: a few clicks in GitHub’s browser editor
• Deploy: fully automatic, no manual intervention needed

JennaPress’s core goal is this: let content creators focus on content, and let the system and AI handle everything else.