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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

#161

Post by southerntofu »

remexre wrote: post #31
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…

Yep, I got frustrated with Zola, ended up maintaining a couple patches, and eventually ended up writing my own (ad hoc, not generally usable) SSG...

Hello, i'm curious about your patches. Do you believe they could be useful for other people? Would you be willing to help upstream them?

I'm happy you coded your own SSG, and if you're happy with it it's cool, but maybe your painpoints with zola are valid for other people as well and we could try to fix them for everyone :)

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

#163

Post by southerntofu »

vyuh wrote: post #91

A few months ago I tried my hand at this because it had some better defaults. Also, I didn't like camel case variables everywhere in Hugo. Then, I gave up when I realised that Zola does not even allow YAML config files. Nit picks everywhere..

Hey there's some healthy skepticism about YAML on zola's side. In particular, the maintainer believes encouraging people to use a broken/dangerous (in terms of remote-code execution in some implementations) serialization format is not a good idea, even though Rust YAML parser is safe from that.

There's also a concern for maintenance: maintaining the zola codebase to support more serialization formats is more work. If more contributors get involved regularly, it will be less of a problem.

In fact, zola started supporting YAML frontmatter for compatibility reasons lately, but it's explicitly stated in the docs this is not the recommended/supported way to do things.

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

#164

Post by southerntofu »

gadders wrote: post #92
southerntofu wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is actively stopping it. In fact a lot of people would strongly appreciate it, maybe even contribute. I would really love to see something like that: - local-first CMS with a strong emphasis on folders/files - multiple DVCS integrations (git, mercurial, pijul) with commit signatures (PGP) - support for forge APIs and email-based workflow to simplify the cooperative PR/MR/patch process - strong translations su…

I think it would be cool if it had all that stuff, but also hid the complexity from the users. i.e. wizards to talk them through using an external host via SFTP, or github pages, or wherever.

Yes, hiding away the complexity from the end-user was implicitly part of my checklist ;)

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

#165

Post by southerntofu »

jacques_chester wrote: post #88
southerntofu wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there is only a single Rust implementation for the moment, but tera templates are really similar to jinja (only difference i know is usage of named arguments in filters/functions). If i may, what's your usecase?

Just an ordinary static website. Some standalone pages, some blogging posts. I can take another look at Zola and see if I've changed my mind -- the speed really is excellent.

zola should be really fit for that, let us know if you encounter any issues

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

#166

Post by southerntofu »

temp8964 wrote: post #94
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…

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.

> why don't you just use WordPress?

Making a Wordpress theme is more complex, and is full of footguns for security concerns. The fact that using a specific theme can open security issues server-side is worrying to me.

I want my server to serve files without having to worry about security vulnerabilities. That's why i use a SSG (zola).

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

#167

Post by southerntofu »

xemoka wrote: post #63

I run a few (well, one published, one in the works, a couple one-offs for student showcases) websites built with Zola. It's a great, little, simple piece of software. What I like: * Already supports the tooling I enjoy → SCSS out of the box, django/jade-like template engine (Terra, its sister project), markdown w/ TOML frontmatter * Fast → build times are almost instant, dev server builds to memory and does live-relo…

> I have students/interns who have picked up markdown faster than any other markup or CMS.

That's also my experience with non-technical users.

> a way to build from an API endpoint instead of markdown

Well zola is not extensible in this regard. But it should be trivial to build a shell/python/rust script that exports your content to the format zola expects. Don't hesitate to post in the community forums if you need help with that.

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

#168

Post by southerntofu »

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…

> Between Wix and Zola is an opportunity, in my opinion.

I strongly agree. There's plenty of niche proprietary tools like that, however i don't know of a collaborative, free-software solution like that.

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

#169

Post by lenkite »

CJefferson wrote: post #53
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…

Personally, all I want is a full proper programming language in my templating. Every templating language ends up being irritatingly limited, for me at least.

Clojure hiccup: https://github.com/weavejester/hiccup

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

#170

Post by Dma54rhs »

1f60c wrote: post #149
epalm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jekyll lost me at “step one, install ruby”

When Jekyll was created, all Apple laptops shipped with Ruby, and Apple has (had?) a large share of the “developer/power user” market. That’s my theory, at least.

Even shared hosting at the time came with ruby on rails support. Maybe it still does, but ruby was way more popular at the time in general.
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