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Zola: A fast static site generator in a single binary

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Re: Zola: A fast static site generator in a single binary

#41
post #7

I though this was about the wedding registry site at first. Anyway, I liked this line from the Github: > Hugo gets ehh for the template engine because while it is probably the most powerful template engine in the list (after Jinja2) it personally drives me insane, to the point of writing my own template engine and static site generator. Yes, this is a bit biased. This seems to be the life cycle of static site generat…

I think I’m just going to write a HTTP server for my website in Go, download the entire website with wget and host that statically. At least that way I can have any feature I want.

When I decided it wasn't worth keeping my personal site dynamic, I took my webapp and pulled out the core of it, and built a small little script that enumerated the possible urls and "requested them" from the old webapp and wrote them to files, turning the webapp into a static site generator.

Re: Zola: A fast static site generator in a single binary

#42
post #18
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by using Go's horrible templating minilanguage Any specifics that stand out to you? I haven’t done a lot with templating, but when I was investigating Hugo a while back it seemed straightforward enough. But that was at a high level.

I've used Go's templating a few times, most recently I used it in my own static site generator. For me the most difficult thing about it is that it is another language grafted on top of Go, and it does not always do what you expect it to do. The documentation is hard read and not always clear on how things are supposed to work. For example: - If I pass in a struct that contains a map of structs, how exactly can I acc…

> For me the most difficult thing about it is that it is another language grafted on top of Go, and it does not always do what you expect it to do. ...

Ah, I see. At my first glance I thought it was just normal Go syntax. I’ll have to look into this more, thanks!

Re: Zola: A fast static site generator in a single binary

#43
post #8

Jamstack lists 322 static site generators plus there are probably many homemade solutions using standard unix tools etc. I am wondering if there are any unique selling points not yet covered by less than a dozen projects. Fast compilation and zero dependencies seems no fit to that category. Do not get me wrong, I really appreciate the creativity and variety of open solution, I am just wondering what it needs to get h…

I think its because of the javascript problem: every second user of a product gets invested enough in the problem space they can't resist making just one tiny modifications. Then six weeks later there they are, editing a video for the homepage of their own project that does the same as the first product but in "their own voice".

Re: Zola: A fast static site generator in a single binary

#44
post #19

Zola seem the most popular static site generator that allows you to generate a website without any JS bundle without using some strange hack. This is the way I firstly stumbled upon it as I was looking for a fast way to generate a fully static site with the advantages of a generator and none of the overheads... It may be limited for certain use cases but I think it would be my first choice for editing a static site w…

> Zola seem the most popular static site generator that allows you to generate a website without any JS bundle without using some strange hack.

I'd say Gatsby or NextJS are more popular due to being written in JS. They can both produce zero JS websites.

Re: Zola: A fast static site generator in a single binary

#45
post #11
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Gatsby recently and it's been pretty good, as long as you're not opposed to node and JS.

We're looking at Gatsby now. We don't care about the language used to generate a site as long as it doesn't send silent errors into the finished result (always a concern with JS...) What else did you try before landing on Gatsby?

I'd personally try NextJS, it's a lot easier than Gatsby. This is the main article that turned my mind after trying both: https://jaredpalmer.com/gatsby-vs-nextjs

Re: Zola: A fast static site generator in a single binary

#46
post #19

Zola seem the most popular static site generator that allows you to generate a website without any JS bundle without using some strange hack. This is the way I firstly stumbled upon it as I was looking for a fast way to generate a fully static site with the advantages of a generator and none of the overheads... It may be limited for certain use cases but I think it would be my first choice for editing a static site w…

> Zola seem the most popular static site generator that allows you to generate a website without any JS bundle without using some strange hack. I'd say Gatsby or NextJS are more popular due to being written in JS. They can both produce zero JS websites.

I doubt people who want to avoid javascript will use a javascript based static site builder.

Re: Zola: A fast static site generator in a single binary

#47
I wish there were a way to use static site generators written in languages other than JS but still use JS features like JSX. I really dislike most templating languages because they are just hacks over a real programmatic way of composing content (via functions that return content). In templating languages, it's more like straight substitution of content.

It's similar to macros vs actual functions in something like C++. Sure, you could write everything in macros but why not use actual composition?

Re: Zola: A fast static site generator in a single binary

#49
post #17

Tangential Related: how do people use static site generators (SSG) when they have more than 1 team member who's publishing site updates? Are they having the SSG trigger off of a git push?

Zola has instructions for how to set up git -> site update automation to Netlify or Vercel through GitHub or GitLab. I setup that process to try that out on both for a website for a local org I volunteer for and it was quick to get going. Not sure how easy a non-technical user might find updates though.

Re: Zola: A fast static site generator in a single binary

#50
post #11
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Gatsby recently and it's been pretty good, as long as you're not opposed to node and JS.

We're looking at Gatsby now. We don't care about the language used to generate a site as long as it doesn't send silent errors into the finished result (always a concern with JS...) What else did you try before landing on Gatsby?

I tried Jekyll, Hugo and Pelican. Neither sat as well with me personally as Gatsby.

I like only having to worry about a single language stack, and I can use typescript with Gatsby which negates some of my misgivings with js. Plus I can use react paradigms everywhere which is nice.

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