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A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

mxb.dev

21–30 of 113 posts

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#21
The simplest solution is to make a static website of your dynamic one using wget, and then publish that. I did this e.g. for Wordpress sites, works really well and is very reliable. The process can be triggered via a cron script or manually (I wrote a small Wordpress plugin for it). No special hardware, infrastructure or cloud services required. Just make sure all resources are reachable via a link (so wget can find them) or manually point it at a list of otherwise unreachable files (e.g. using a sitemap or .txt file).

The advantage is that you can still use your existing CMS, so your staff won't need to learn a new system, and you also don't need any third-party cloud services.

Actually, if your CMS is properly configured (e.g. correct cache headers) you can also simply put it behind a CDN like Cloudflare, which will handle the caching and scaling for you.

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#22
I'm a lil surprised at the speed!

also, a little cheap addition would be saying the "you're viewing this page: online/offline, last refresh: now/two days ago" or such, and possibly either a button, or automatic popup for the "add to home/desktop" pwa button...

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#23
What we did for tacticalvote.co.uk:

1. A static site generator, with markdown as the source input in Github

2. Data from Google Sheets

3. A bash job on a cron that would poll both for changes... if changes exist, re-publish the site or data and purge Cloudflare cache using their API

4. Configure Cloudflare via Page Rule to Cache Everything

Even with a very high change rate and hundreds of thousands of visitors a day and severe traffic spikes... the site was instantaneous to load, simple to maintain and update, and the cache purge stampede never overwhelmed the cheapest Linode serving the static files.

The content editors used Github as the CMS and edited Markdown, or just updated data in Google Sheets. Changes were live within 5 minutes.

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#24
Netlify CMS is based on React. In what universe could this be considered appropriate for a basic emergency website?

Edit: I don't really mind if React is only used as the authoring interface. But the consumer view should not require Javascript, and AFAICT Netlify CMS does.

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#25

I like the idea of this but the process required to deploy it needs to be more carefully thought out. As it is, this currently assumes that any local agency or whatever contractor it works with will: * Be familiar and comfortable with npm * Be familiar and comfortable with netlify * Be aware of this as a possible option The bar for these folks is pretty darn low. A lot of organizations end up contracting with individ…

I agree, I'd love to see this as a docker container or Makefile where dependencies are automatically pulled in if not present on the host machine.

I think even Docker might be a big ask. I mean, my experience so far has been that a lot of the people that this is targeted towards are still using platforms like Wordpress, Drupal, and Magento (all php...). Heck, git adoption still isn't 100% in this market; I just recently received sftp credentials from an agency that works in this niche.

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#26
post #22

I'm a lil surprised at the speed! also, a little cheap addition would be saying the "you're viewing this page: online/offline, last refresh: now/two days ago" or such, and possibly either a button, or automatic popup for the "add to home/desktop" pwa button...

apparently missed the pwa button, that's my bad, initially viewed in a HN wrapper app

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#27
post #23

What we did for tacticalvote.co.uk: 1. A static site generator, with markdown as the source input in Github 2. Data from Google Sheets 3. A bash job on a cron that would poll both for changes... if changes exist, re-publish the site or data and purge Cloudflare cache using their API 4. Configure Cloudflare via Page Rule to Cache Everything Even with a very high change rate and hundreds of thousands of visitors a day…

Interesting. Have you made your source available?

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#28

Netlify CMS is based on React. In what universe could this be considered appropriate for a basic emergency website? Edit: I don't really mind if React is only used as the authoring interface. But the consumer view should not require Javascript, and AFAICT Netlify CMS does.

You can view the demo without JavaScript and it mentions static site generation.

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#29

Netlify CMS is based on React. In what universe could this be considered appropriate for a basic emergency website? Edit: I don't really mind if React is only used as the authoring interface. But the consumer view should not require Javascript, and AFAICT Netlify CMS does.

Because the CMS is decoupled from the content, and installing Netlify CMS is very fast. I was able to coach an SMB owner into using it for their website in about 1h tops (after setting everything up myself).

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I'd love to see this as a docker container or Makefile where dependencies are automatically pulled in if not present on the host machine.

I think even Docker might be a big ask. I mean, my experience so far has been that a lot of the people that this is targeted towards are still using platforms like Wordpress, Drupal, and Magento (all php...). Heck, git adoption still isn't 100% in this market; I just recently received sftp credentials from an agency that works in this niche.

Agreed. Think something like sheet2site.com, but even then it requires one to be familiar with spreadsheets.
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