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Smaller is better – The rise, fall, and rise of flat file software

wilcosky.com

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Re: Smaller is better – The rise, fall, and rise of flat file software

#11

Post by throwaway0x7E6 »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #7
yawnxyz wrote: post #3

Flat file websites make sense when you have a blog and such. I don't even know why you'd use a CMS when Next.js or SvelteKit can just generate all the pages from a folder with markdown files. Just write your content in Markdown or pull your content in at the static build stage and your content is ready to go. Can anyone explain how sites like Flatboard handle user input into a flat file system? How do they handle con…

One thing CMSes have that SSGs don’t is: the ability to create posts without editing the source. Simply login to your admin panel and start writing. No Git repository or build scripts required.

CMS/WYSIWYG functionality does not necessarily have to be baked into the application that serves the content

Re: Smaller is better – The rise, fall, and rise of flat file software

#13

Post by snacksy »

riidom wrote: post #2

As someone not overly backend proficient, I love the concept of flat-file. I just rebuilt my blog with another flat file CMS, literally finished it last night, and today I am reading this article and think, whether WonderCMS may have been a better choice.. but, no I won't start over. The CMS I picked is PicoCMS - what flat file stuff have you used and can recommend? And probably important, how well does it scale? I c…

Just checked your blog. The text size seems to big on mobile https://imgur.com/a/rwHI5WU

Re: Smaller is better – The rise, fall, and rise of flat file software

#14

Post by cschwarm »

I'm trying to get away from a DB-based CMS for some company web sites. Static generators won't do for a number of reasons, so a flat-file CMS seems like a good fit.

Currently I'm looking at GravCMS [1] as an alternative. It's free initially, but it can become somewhat expensive with many official plugins. But it's file format is Markdown, and one can combine multiple files into a so-called modular page. It has a backend for editing, forms and e-mailing of form submissions. Seems perfect for small and mid-sized company web site.

Another option I considered was Kirby [2]. Its backend UI is configurable. That's nice in theory but the documentation is somewhat lacking, in my opinion. I've used the starterpack and it took me hours to find the one command to be able to add new pages. Its content format is also custom, not Markdown. Finally, it's €100 per site.

Also, a few days ago, I stumbled upon Typemill [3] which I will check next week.

[1] https://getgrav.org/

[2] https://getkirby.com/

[3] https://typemill.net/

Re: Smaller is better – The rise, fall, and rise of flat file software

#15

Post by lucasverra »

kbrannigan wrote: post #4
riidom wrote: post #2

As someone not overly backend proficient, I love the concept of flat-file. I just rebuilt my blog with another flat file CMS, literally finished it last night, and today I am reading this article and think, whether WonderCMS may have been a better choice.. but, no I won't start over. The CMS I picked is PicoCMS - what flat file stuff have you used and can recommend? And probably important, how well does it scale? I c…

Before you worry about 1 million daily visitors. Worry about 50 daily visitors.

Even 10 daily users must be acknowledged as a big milestone

Re: Smaller is better – The rise, fall, and rise of flat file software

#16

Post by zinekeller »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #7
yawnxyz wrote: post #3

Flat file websites make sense when you have a blog and such. I don't even know why you'd use a CMS when Next.js or SvelteKit can just generate all the pages from a folder with markdown files. Just write your content in Markdown or pull your content in at the static build stage and your content is ready to go. Can anyone explain how sites like Flatboard handle user input into a flat file system? How do they handle con…

One thing CMSes have that SSGs don’t is: the ability to create posts without editing the source. Simply login to your admin panel and start writing. No Git repository or build scripts required.

CMSes and SSGs aren't necessarily mutually exclusive: WordPress can be an SSG. The only thing about SSGs are they don't static webpages for serving but the process of creating it doesn't matter, whether it's handcrafted (MarkDown) or integrated into a CMS.

Re: Smaller is better – The rise, fall, and rise of flat file software

#17

Post by riidom »

snacksy wrote: post #13
riidom wrote: post #2

As someone not overly backend proficient, I love the concept of flat-file. I just rebuilt my blog with another flat file CMS, literally finished it last night, and today I am reading this article and think, whether WonderCMS may have been a better choice.. but, no I won't start over. The CMS I picked is PicoCMS - what flat file stuff have you used and can recommend? And probably important, how well does it scale? I c…

Just checked your blog. The text size seems to big on mobile https://imgur.com/a/rwHI5WU

For some reason I get typescript errors and a blank page on imgur since today, both in Vivaldi and Firefox.

But I'll look into the issue, thanks for the feedback!

Re: Smaller is better – The rise, fall, and rise of flat file software

#20

Post by forgotpwd16 »

riidom wrote: post #2

As someone not overly backend proficient, I love the concept of flat-file. I just rebuilt my blog with another flat file CMS, literally finished it last night, and today I am reading this article and think, whether WonderCMS may have been a better choice.. but, no I won't start over. The CMS I picked is PicoCMS - what flat file stuff have you used and can recommend? And probably important, how well does it scale? I c…

>but, no I won't start over

The result looks very good so don't think it's worth. By the way since you copied your posts to your new blog but still retain them to the old one, you may want to add the canonical meta tag to the old ones.

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