Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zola: A fast static site generator in a single binary

getzola.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 177 posts

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

#111

Post by spf13 »

regus wrote: 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 did this exact thing when I got frustrated with Jekyll (and friends) and created Hugo. Of course, at the time all SSGs were in dynamic languages and very VERY slow.

Happy to see some Hugo ideas made it into Zola.

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

#112

Post by badsectoracula »

bookmarkable wrote: post #99

My input as a former technologist turned marketing guy over the years - where is a decent SSG (perhaps like Zola) with page building drag and drop tools like a Wix or a Squarespace? I'd love to move our site off of Wix - and have full control when needed and work offline before publishing pages - but inevitably you dive back into code or the guts of database queries once you leave these WYSIWYG tools. Between Wix and…

Some time ago i found about Publii which is a desktop-based static site CMS with a mostly WYSIWYG editor (i write "mostly" because you do not edit the text directly in the site like you'd do in, e.g. iWeb, but you still use a rich text editor). It works as a desktop application (it is actually written in Electron), you do all editing locally and then you upload the files to a server (you can do that either manually or using its automatic uploading functionality which -from what i can see in my installation- supports FTP/FTPS, SFTP, Amazon S3, GitHub Pages, GitLab, netlify and Google Cloud). The sites are stored in folders with an SQLite database for most stuff and media files in their own folders.

Though in terms of customization is rather lite. There is theme support with custom themes so i guess it is possible, it just looks like a baklava of webdev layers to me that i didn't want to bother with. Most themes do seem to provide a tiny bit of customization though.

I made a blog with it and so far the main limitation is that i don't feel there is much i have to write, not the software :-P.

[0] https://getpublii.com/

[1] http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/

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

#113

Post by freedomben »

This looks really neat. The first thing I look for now after using several different static generators is how they handle images (and other static media, but images are most important since they need optimizing). I'm going to give this project a try!

Next.js is wonderful, but I've had a crazy amount of pain because `` can't be used if you want to export to purely static (which I strongly prefer), and other options seem to have died (if anybody has one they use or maintain, please let me know!!). I've ended up rolling my own solution in bash that uses Squoosh to crank out set sizes and the like, but it's gross and not useful for others that aren't me, which is a problem when I have to collaborate.

Anyway, thanks for the project!

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

#114

Post by waterside81 »

spf13 wrote: post #111
regus wrote: 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 did this exact thing when I got frustrated with Jekyll (and friends) and created Hugo. Of course, at the time all SSGs were in dynamic languages and very VERY slow. Happy to see some Hugo ideas made it into Zola.

Hey - thanks for making Hugo. We run our blog on it and I love it. Spitting out an AMP version and maintaing it side-by-side with our non-AMP version was a piece of cake.

Edit: noticed you make Cobra too! Damn - I owe you like 1000 man hours of saved work.

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

#115

Post by cambalache »

I am not a professional front-ender. I will tell you my experience with all the SSG I have tried.

OK,cool, let's read the documentation.OK , first example, clone this template and blah blah. The template is always like 4 versions behind (the same for 90% of the templates that can be downloaded). Even doing the most simple change it is a pain,it almost feels black-boxy. At that moment I gave up and go back to simple JS/CSS with React if needed.

Among that lot the one which seems the sanest is Next and even then it is too opinionated for my taste.

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

#116

Post by temp8964 »

bccdee wrote: post #109
temp8964 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really want to focus on writing, why don't you just use WordPress? My feeling is that SSG is a toy to play with. I had a SSG blog before. After stop using it for half year and came back, I found I had to relearn the whole thing to be able to make it work again. Add any function is a PITA. Totally wasting of time.

You have to relearn it if you want to create a new theme for it. If you want to focus on writing, you just put new markdown files inside the post folder. Not to mention that wordpress isn't static, which makes hosting more complicated & expensive.

My two cents are blogging through static hosting is more complicated than wordpress on basic php hosting. I need the email hosting comes with the $3/month web hosting anyway.

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

#117

Post by regus »

spf13 wrote: post #111
regus wrote: 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 did this exact thing when I got frustrated with Jekyll (and friends) and created Hugo. Of course, at the time all SSGs were in dynamic languages and very VERY slow. Happy to see some Hugo ideas made it into Zola.

spf13, thank you for your vim config, I have been using it for years!

In regards to Hugo, I enjoyed using it at first, I loved how fast it was, but I kept running into issues so I decided to make my own SSG.

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

#118

Post by brabel »

smartmic wrote: 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…

As someone who authored one of thoses 322 SSGs, I wonder the same thing :)

It's just a really fun project to work on, quite easy to get something working and the result, even if it sucks, is almost immediately useful for anyone who needs a SSG. It may suck but you know exactly how it works.

Some of us get too excited and actually end up making something other people also want to use.

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

#119

Post by StavrosK »

minitoar wrote: post #27
regus wrote: 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…

Perhaps we need a meta ssg. An ssgg if you will. Perhaps a dsl for specifying ssgs.

SSGG*

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

#120

Post by yoz-y »

minitoar wrote: post #27
regus wrote: 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…

Perhaps we need a meta ssg. An ssgg if you will. Perhaps a dsl for specifying ssgs.

As long as they all use the same content format (like markdown + preamble) it’s relatively easy to move from one to another. Transferring themes is a pain though.
Post reply on HN