Free static site generator for small restaurants and cafes • Hacker News Board

Re: Free static site generator for small restaurants and cafes

#31

Post by ok123456 » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 12:05 AM UTC

hunter2_ wrote: post #6

davisr wrote: post #2

No one should need JS to see the soups when that could be handled perfectly fine with CSS. I wish restaurants would just make their homepage a PDF of the menu.

I agree with no JS, but why PDF over HTML? Hard-wrapping for letter-sized paper (ok, a PDF doesn't need to be letter-sized, but most menus are approximately that) with crapshoot reflow options for soft-wrapping in certain viewer apps is pretty dicey on a phone, mitigated only slightly by rotating the phone sideways. The only benefit I can think of is if it leads to more frequent updates by the restaurant, due to limi…

If the restaurant doesn't have anything besides a menu, /index.pdf is fine—no web design required; reuse the menu they're printing anyway.

The trade-off is that they'll have to pinch/zoom if they have a small display. It's a minor inconvenience to make the exact information they want available instantly.

Re: Free static site generator for small restaurants and cafes

#32

Post by burningChrome » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 12:05 AM UTC

miladyincontrol wrote: post #15

SchemaLoad wrote: post #14

It's pretty sad how there doesn't seem to be any decent free options for websites which are easy to use. Squarespace and such cost a fortune which isn't worth it if you aren't trying to run a full ecommerce site. Plenty of services offer free hosting of static content but don't have any way a normal person can use them. Having to use a static site generator is too hard for non programmers. I'm just surprised we haven…

A webapp or gui WYSIWYG static generator with basic git support abstracted away would go far for many. Just let it push to some private repo which cloudflare pages or similar would deploy off of. It really feels like the only part of a non-static site most want is an editor. I absolutely loathe the matter but I do see why some restaurants only maintain a facebook page for their online presence.

This is what Netlify does. Hook up a private repo and deploy. Make a commit and it auto builds and you have a CI/CD pipeline. This is what I build all of my static sites with. You can do almost any JS framework like React, Angular, Vue, etc.

Netlify does way more than this, but it makes hosting static stuff super easy.

https://www.netlify.com/

Re: Free static site generator for small restaurants and cafes

#33

Post by AlotOfReading » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 12:06 AM UTC

victorbjorklund wrote: post #24

davisr wrote: post #2

No one should need JS to see the soups when that could be handled perfectly fine with CSS. I wish restaurants would just make their homepage a PDF of the menu.

PDF:s are not great on mobile. And you can’t easily translate them (I often translate restaurant menus when they are on a website with just 2 clicks)

Translating anything that renders on my screen is the same two clicks to open an LLM with the screen contents. I expect that will become an increasingly universal experience as LLM features get shoved into every nook and cranny of tech.

Re: Free static site generator for small restaurants and cafes

#34

Post by bryanhogan » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 12:16 AM UTC

SchemaLoad wrote: post #14

It's pretty sad how there doesn't seem to be any decent free options for websites which are easy to use. Squarespace and such cost a fortune which isn't worth it if you aren't trying to run a full ecommerce site. Plenty of services offer free hosting of static content but don't have any way a normal person can use them. Having to use a static site generator is too hard for non programmers. I'm just surprised we haven…

Honestly, there are some easier ways out there now, although of course no solution is perfect.

For non-technical people I'd recommend the Hostinger Website Builder, Obsidian Quartz or Astro Starlight.

Although as a front-end dev I'd choose building a custom page with Astro, which has now become much easier though with good templates available + LLM assistance.

I wrote a comparison of less-technical ways to build a website here with more details: https://webdev.bryanhogan.com/start/ways-to-build/

Re: Free static site generator for small restaurants and cafes

#35

Post by venturecruelty » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 12:19 AM UTC

davisr wrote: post #2

No one should need JS to see the soups when that could be handled perfectly fine with CSS. I wish restaurants would just make their homepage a PDF of the menu.

No one should need an entire PostScript interpreter to see the soup of the day, either. A restaurant menu is text and images. HTML and CSS are perfect for text and images.

Re: Free static site generator for small restaurants and cafes

#36

Post by captn3m0 » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 12:24 AM UTC

I'm not seeing anything very specific in the code - feels like this could be just another Jekyll theme and still work the same. There's some custom front-matter in markdown files, but change that to regular YAML and it will just work.

Re: Free static site generator for small restaurants and cafes

#37

Post by kindawinda » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 12:28 AM UTC

weitendorf wrote: post #18

SchemaLoad wrote: post #14

It's pretty sad how there doesn't seem to be any decent free options for websites which are easy to use. Squarespace and such cost a fortune which isn't worth it if you aren't trying to run a full ecommerce site. Plenty of services offer free hosting of static content but don't have any way a normal person can use them. Having to use a static site generator is too hard for non programmers. I'm just surprised we haven…

This is exactly what we're trying to build with https://github.com/accretional/statue - you can email me or hit me up on Linkedin to get early access to our free static site hosting (which our new site for the project at https://statue.dev runs on, and which will Soon™ have a public-facing product doing exactly what you just asked for) Basically you'll be able to edit the markdown for your site in a souped up version…

This isn't exactly the point. He said easy to use. Yours requires developer skills which is not what he is looking for.

Re: Free static site generator for small restaurants and cafes

#38

Post by spartanatreyu » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 12:28 AM UTC

mvdtnz wrote: post #11

davisr wrote: post #2

No one should need JS to see the soups when that could be handled perfectly fine with CSS. I wish restaurants would just make their homepage a PDF of the menu.

No one is browsing the internet without JS today (within margin of error). Whether or not this "should" be the case, it is.

This is the wrong way of looking at it.

Making a website's basic functionality work without JS isn't just for the random users who switch off their browser's JS runtime.

It's also for the people who have a random network dropout or slowdown on a random file (in this case a JS file).

Re: Free static site generator for small restaurants and cafes

#39

Post by samdoesnothing » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 12:30 AM UTC

davisr wrote: post #2

No one should need JS to see the soups when that could be handled perfectly fine with CSS. I wish restaurants would just make their homepage a PDF of the menu.

Nobody should need a PDF renderer to see the soups.

Actually, nobody should need an XML parser to see the soups either.

Re: Free static site generator for small restaurants and cafes

#40

Post by Kerrick » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 12:35 AM UTC

SchemaLoad wrote: post #27

fckgw wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Squarespace is like $20/mo for a basic site promoting your Brick and Mortar business. That includes domain, hosting, and a template/CMS. It's not that pricey.

It's not pricey if you are a serious business making good money. It's a huge price if you are say a part time artist just wanting somewhere to store a price list, gallery and contact form. I'm just surprised there is nothing that fills the gap between github pages and a full hosted solution with a ton of junk you don't need. All it really needs is maybe a locally running app that can handle generating the static page…