Site.js: Small Web construction set • Hacker News Board

Re: Site.js: Small Web construction set

#21

Post by shipstain » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #12

Wow. That looks super complicated. For a small website I'd recommend just using your system repo to install nginx and then putting html and media files in the web directory.

It's strange that plain old html and media files are so shunned for simple sites.

Buying a domain name, buying web space, pointing the domain name to the web space, uploading files. Does seem ever so simple compared with a million other complex workflows.

And yet, it didn't really catch on.

Give someone a one-click installer and the bottleneck will still be content creation and design by committee.

Re: Site.js: Small Web construction set

#22

Post by pmlnr » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

tluyben2 wrote: post #16

Small web and simple web is html. Why this?

Because then aral couldn't reinvent the wheel.

Re: Site.js: Small Web construction set

#23

Post by superkuh » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

nmstoker wrote: post #17

superkuh wrote: post #12

Wow. That looks super complicated. For a small website I'd recommend just using your system repo to install nginx and then putting html and media files in the web directory.

It didn't strike me as that complicated or hard to follow. The method you describe is fine but the average user will quickly run into a lack of features that are taken for granted with that approach, and if they then progress to something more "mainstream" it will probably be way more complicated than this.

For the vast majority of simple sites a static nginx web directory is perfect. For anything more dynamic they'd be better off using a real setup and not some opaque javascript all-in-one binary full of unintentional (to the user who didn't explicitly set them up) attack surfaces.

Re: Site.js: Small Web construction set

#24

Post by kderbyma » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

shameless plug. I am working on an open source project for something similar. it is a all-in-one website and generator. you can use it to generate static sites in zips and or host a live server and an admin panel for editting.

I just pushed demonstrable alpha out yesterday.

it's called Calliope.

(https://calliope.site)

Re: Site.js: Small Web construction set

#25

Post by kderbyma » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

kderbyma wrote: post #24

shameless plug. I am working on an open source project for something similar. it is a all-in-one website and generator. you can use it to generate static sites in zips and or host a live server and an admin panel for editting. I just pushed demonstrable alpha out yesterday. it's called Calliope. ( https://calliope.site )

Netlify Routing is Down Presently - Using their subdomain works.

(https://calliope-demo.netlify.app/)

Re: Site.js: Small Web construction set

#26

Post by thunderbong » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 8:16 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #12

Wow. That looks super complicated. For a small website I'd recommend just using your system repo to install nginx and then putting html and media files in the web directory.

In a way you're right, there are a bunch of commands. However, they are pretty straight-forward and simple. And that's only required for the initial setup.

Your comment already assumes that just because a person can type in commands on a terminal, they need to know about version management, nginx configuration and letsencrypt setup.

If you look at the site docs [0], it further syncs from local to remote.

Also, in many cases all the overhead that we, as software developers assume we should have for everything, need not be the case for just a simple website.

[0]: https://github.com/small-tech/site.js/blob/master/README.md

Re: Site.js: Small Web construction set

#27

Post by nmstoker » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #23

nmstoker wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't strike me as that complicated or hard to follow. The method you describe is fine but the average user will quickly run into a lack of features that are taken for granted with that approach, and if they then progress to something more "mainstream" it will probably be way more complicated than this.

For the vast majority of simple sites a static nginx web directory is perfect. For anything more dynamic they'd be better off using a real setup and not some opaque javascript all-in-one binary full of unintentional (to the user who didn't explicitly set them up) attack surfaces.

Ah, like another left-pad situation?

Re: Site.js: Small Web construction set

#28

Post by superkuh » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 4:14 AM UTC

thunderbong wrote: post #26

superkuh wrote: post #12

Wow. That looks super complicated. For a small website I'd recommend just using your system repo to install nginx and then putting html and media files in the web directory.

In a way you're right, there are a bunch of commands. However, they are pretty straight-forward and simple. And that's only required for the initial setup. Your comment already assumes that just because a person can type in commands on a terminal, they need to know about version management, nginx configuration and letsencrypt setup. If you look at the site docs [0], it further syncs from local to remote. Also, in man…

    sudo apt-get install nginx

Check where nginx puts the www directory by doing a google search, "myos version nginx default directory".

    cp index.html /var/www/
    cp latestphoto.jpg /var/www/
    # or use your OS GUI file manager

Set up the port forward from the router to localip:80 and you're done.

You're assuming you need HTTPS but it's a personal static site so no letsencrypt is needed yet. You're assuming they need to configure nginx, but they don't the debian/ubuntu defaults are fine. You're assuming they need to learn version management for some unfathomable reason but I can't even understand that. You're assuming people need some sort of 'sync' but they don't. That's what an OS file manager is for.

It's really not that complex unless you make it so.

Re: Site.js: Small Web construction set

#29

Post by vittore » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 8:14 AM UTC

I like the idea, but i feel like it should be dumb-ed down even more.

For simple things I like using next.js with vercel (ex zeit, ex now). You also get simple file-system based routing if you want it (thanks to next.js) and very easy deploy, that is also gets you letsencrypt certificate automatically. It does not have database part of the story atm, but you can use dynamo/fauna/mongo and alike.

Really simple thing is dark lang though! it has all of these concerns integrated in, have IDE and incremental automatic deployment. Absolutely love it. But it is still quite early beta.

Re: Site.js: Small Web construction set

#30

Post by ChrisArchitect » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

what is this tho? This reads like any other small open source node based site generator page on github..... You're encouraging people to run their own sites/put up their own pages/own domains etc...... why the giant page of stuff and engine that's duplicating much of the other independent projects out there? what's the differentiator?