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Static Site Generators

staticsitegenerators.net

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Re: Static Site Generators

#21

Post by snide »

slacka wrote: post #20

My 60 yr old mother runs 2 small nonprofits, and is responsible for the web content and design. She's a pro with Word Perfect, but gets confused by simple HTML tags, and no interest, time, or aptitude to learn HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Last weekend, she asked for help with her website, and I was shocked to find out they still look like they're out of the late 90's. She does all of her editing with a 2006 copy of dreamweav…

You might like webhook.com.

We're launching in about a month. Basically, we're a static site generator with a CMS. You don't even use YAML or front-matter. Just build your forms with a local GUI, then pass yoursite.com/cms/ over to your Mom so she can edit in a wysiwyg (or markdown...whatever). Design with normal css/html and Django style templating.

I built it because I loved static site generators (some great tools in that list), but they were all worthless for me as soon as I needed to pass the site off to non-hacker friends. I wanted it to be easy on me and easy on them. Using firebase and ember, we were able to load the entire CMS off a static server (we still need a server to regenerate on changes though).

And before you ask, yes we're trying to figure out how to make it self-hostable. It's a little harder for us, since we use a bunch of separate services (firebase, elastic search, google image resizing...etc) to make it so you don't need to install much locally, just Node. Small team at the moment, trying to avoid VC investment and went straight to Kickstarter.

For everyone else who just likes SSGs and don't need a CMS, I'm a big fan of Harp and Cactus. The later because I came from a Django background.

If you're looking at a WYSIWYG from a design standpoint you might like something like http://macaw.co/

Re: Static Site Generators

#22

Post by raw_creations »

slacka wrote: post #20

My 60 yr old mother runs 2 small nonprofits, and is responsible for the web content and design. She's a pro with Word Perfect, but gets confused by simple HTML tags, and no interest, time, or aptitude to learn HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Last weekend, she asked for help with her website, and I was shocked to find out they still look like they're out of the late 90's. She does all of her editing with a 2006 copy of dreamweav…

Can't say if it's better, but one i've used that's super easy is WebDwarf: http://www.virtualmechanics.com/products/dwarf/

Re: Static Site Generators

#24

Post by joebadmo »

hpaavola wrote: post #19

Is ther any CMS/blog/... type of thing that would create flat files, but keep all the content also in DB? That way search and comments (and especially moderation for comments) would be easier to handle, but still it would be easy on the server. For my own site I created something like this, https://github.com/Harri/Spage , but instead of DB, I used another set of flat files (serialized arrays containing the page cont…

DocPad is a little more involved to get running, but does something like what you're describing: https://github.com/bevry/docpad

Re: Static Site Generators

#25

Post by webXL »

mskierkowski wrote: post #5

Something similar: http://staticgen.com/ Same idea, but staticgen.com is a little easier to navigate but don't think it's quite as comprehensive.

Great, now someone's gonna write a static site generator site generator... when does it stop?! There's got to be a list of site/project ideas that people have actually asked for.

Re: Static Site Generators

#26

Post by fencepost »

raw_creations wrote: post #22
slacka wrote: post #20

My 60 yr old mother runs 2 small nonprofits, and is responsible for the web content and design. She's a pro with Word Perfect, but gets confused by simple HTML tags, and no interest, time, or aptitude to learn HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Last weekend, she asked for help with her website, and I was shocked to find out they still look like they're out of the late 90's. She does all of her editing with a 2006 copy of dreamweav…

Can't say if it's better, but one i've used that's super easy is WebDwarf: http://www.virtualmechanics.com/products/dwarf/

I haven't used WebDwarf, but I've been asked to make changes to a site someone created with one of Virtual Mechanics' other products, SiteSpinner Pro and have been pretty horrified.

The HTML it spits out is basically a bunch of absolutely-positioned divs, apparently in whatever order things were edited in. That means that a box, a headline within that box and text following that headline are all in completely separate locations within the file. Completely unmaintainable unless you also have their software for further edits.

Re: Static Site Generators

#28

Post by callmeed »

slacka wrote: post #20

My 60 yr old mother runs 2 small nonprofits, and is responsible for the web content and design. She's a pro with Word Perfect, but gets confused by simple HTML tags, and no interest, time, or aptitude to learn HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Last weekend, she asked for help with her website, and I was shocked to find out they still look like they're out of the late 90's. She does all of her editing with a 2006 copy of dreamweav…

I have a project that combines Jekyll with a rails app for editing as well as email hooks so you can create/post from an email a la Posterous.

It's currently offline but I can send you the code.

Re: Static Site Generators

#29

Post by DoubleMalt »

slacka wrote: post #20

My 60 yr old mother runs 2 small nonprofits, and is responsible for the web content and design. She's a pro with Word Perfect, but gets confused by simple HTML tags, and no interest, time, or aptitude to learn HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Last weekend, she asked for help with her website, and I was shocked to find out they still look like they're out of the late 90's. She does all of her editing with a 2006 copy of dreamweav…

Try http://substance.io/composer/

Re: Static Site Generators

#30

Post by balladeer »

I am a Python beginner (being a Java dev day-jobber I've been so for more than a year now) and I badly wanted to have a good static site generator written in Python so that I could learn/practise Python while using it, by tweaking it to my needs. I was surprised to see the lack of support and documentation Python site generators suffer from - even Pelican which is a distant third on the pedestal (of stars in the list). I finally settled with Jekyll as even starting was difficult in one of those Python site generators. So seeing Jekyll having close to 5 times the stars the top Python static site generator has in that list is not surprising.
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