Content pages

openplate loads legal pages from markdown files that you mount into the container. The repository holds no legal text of its own. You write the terms, the privacy policy, the imprint, and the pages for the two statutory buttons. They describe your instance and name you as the operator.

Turning it on

Set CONTENT_DIR to a folder that the app can read:

CONTENT_DIR=/srv/openplate-content

With a container, mount the folder read only and point the variable at the mount:

services:
  openplate:
    environment:
      CONTENT_DIR: /content
    volumes:
      - ./content:/content:ro

A value that names no folder stops the boot. A failed mount shows at once. The app cannot start and appear as an instance with no legal pages.

With CONTENT_DIR unset

This is the default, and it suits a household instance that sells nothing.

• Every content route answers 404: /terms, /privacy, /privacy/website, /imprint, /withdrawal, /kuendigung, /kuendigung/bestaetigt, /widerrufen and /widerrufen/bestaetigt.
• The public footer draws Source, Licence and Preferences only. The five legal links (Privacy, Terms, Imprint and the two statutory buttons) are not drawn.
• Settings, About has no Legal group. With the folder mounted, that page lists the same five links under a Legal heading, so a signed-in person, who sees no footer, still reaches the imprint.
• The note a signed-out visitor sees on a personal page links home and to sign in, with no imprint or privacy link.
• The newsletter form, if you turned it on, drops its privacy line.

The links return when the folder holds an imprint.md, in the reader's language or in English. The imprint is the probe because German law requires it on every instance that publishes any of the others.

The folder

<CONTENT_DIR>/
  en/
    terms.md
    privacy.md
    imprint.md
    ...
  de/
    terms.md
    ...

One folder per language: en, de, fr, it, es or tr. One file per page, named by its slug:

A page that is missing in the reader's language is served in English. A page that is missing in English too is a 404. The app reads only these slugs. It never builds a path from a URL.

The app reads each file on request and keeps the parsed page in memory. It reads the file again when its modification time or size changes. An edit to a mounted file appears on the next request without a restart.

The file format

UTF-8, LF line ends, no byte order mark. Each file starts with exactly this front matter:

---
title: Terms of service
updated: 2026-09-21
---

title is the page heading. updated is a calendar date, and the app draws it under the heading as "Last updated", in the reader's language. Do not repeat either one in the body.

The body uses this subset and nothing else:

• Headings ## and ###. # is the title and is never written.
• Paragraphs, separated by a blank line.
• Lists with - or 1. , one level, no indentation.
• **strong** and *emphasis*.
• Links [text](target). The target is a path in the app (/imprint), https://, mailto: or tel:. A path in the app opens without a reload.
• A hard line break: a backslash as the last character of a line, followed by the next line of the same paragraph. Use it for a postal address.
• A definition list: a term line followed by one or more : definition lines, with no blank line between the entries.
• An escape: a backslash before \, *, [ or ] makes it literal.

Paragraphs before the first heading are the page's lead and are drawn larger.

What is refused

Raw HTML of any kind (a < followed by a letter, /, ! or ?), HTML character references such as &, images, tables, code, block quotes, # or #### headings, nested or indented lists, and any {{ placeholder.

A file that breaks the format is refused, not repaired. The app logs every problem with its line number, once per version of the file. The page answers 503 with the neutral error screen. A legal page that silently dropped a table, or printed a tag as text, would publish a document nobody wrote. Fix the file, and the next request serves it.

Named sections

Two pages keep a form in the app's code: /kuendigung (cancel a contract) and /widerrufen (withdraw from a contract). Their confirmation pages keep the receipt in code. The form labels, the buttons, the validation messages and the receipt lines are part of the app. The prose around them comes from the file. A named section carries each piece the app places around the form:

:::section unavailable
Text of the section, in the same subset.
:::

Each of these pages must carry exactly the sections below, once each. A missing section or an extra one is refused like any other error.

Every other page has no sections: its whole body is the page.

The title of kuendigung is the label the German statute requires for that page, and the same goes for widerrufen. The app's footer and submit buttons carry the statutory button labels themselves.

Where the openplate instances get their files

Hosted instances mount files kept in a private repository, one tree per instance. That repository checks every file against this format before it ships. A refused page is caught before it reaches a server.