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Static Site Generators

staticsitegenerators.net

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Re: Static Site Generators

#111

Post by jessaustin »

davexunit wrote: post #78

I've been using Pelican as my static site generator of choice, but I'm frustrated that Markdown and ReStructured Text are the only formats it can handle. I chose ReStructured Text over Markdown, but what I really want is to write org files. I've been meaning to roll my own solution in Emacs Lisp using org-publish plus some custom functions to generate RSS feeds, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

It would probably be pretty straightforward to just write an org adapter as a Pelican reader plugin:

http://pelican.readthedocs.org/en/latest/plugins.html#how-to...

Re: Static Site Generators

#114

Post by ixmatus »

ixmatus wrote: post #100
joshcrews wrote: post #97

I'm a Ruby developer and interested in creating a business in this space. Specifically a online-CMS that generates static html uploaded to a CDN. The target market is businesses who need to know their content is "uncrashable" and "infinitely scalable". The price point would be >$100/mo. Get in touch with me if you are interested in that idea.

That sounds like a feature not a product.

Lol at the downvoters. I'm sure you can build a lifestyle business around a CMS that spits out a static site but honestly, unless your audience is Hacker News, people don't care whether it's static or dynamic and often times they'll ask for that one thing that isn't static and breaks your ability to sell to them.

So yes, this is a feature and not a product as evinced by the numerous plugins and projects that take existing dynamic web application software and can produce static sites (Flask Freeze, Drupal's plugin, I think even WordPress has one).

[EDIT] Which means, what's to stop the existing "site builder" companies from doing the same? They don't sell the feature (static builder from a dynamic site), they sell the product (build yourself a site), and people buy it. The "background benefit" is a slightly faster site and who does that really matter to? Not the customer. The service - reduction of bandwidth and server resources; the could easily introduce the feature, cut resources, and keep the margin.

Re: Static Site Generators

#115

Post by tsifei »

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 should take a look on Pikock. http://www.pikock.com We have a different approach on reliability and simplicity to build your website without coding

Re: Static Site Generators

#116

Post by BrandonSmith »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #106
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…

Caching has killed the need for SSG's for the most part. You can cache Drupal or Wordpress or pretty much anything with either plugins/modules or via a proxy like Varnish. These things work, generally, by copying the dynamic page and serving up a static page until they detect the page has changed or the user is requesting dynamic functionality (trying to post a comment, log in, etc). So you get the best of both world…

I interpret the groundswell interest in the SSG a testament the CMS does not address all the needs in the content publication pipeline. Some organizations have a focus on content creators. Others on developers. In general, the hacker mindset has an allergy towards ecosystems that remove control. The SSG is about providing a framework for the developer to assert control and regaining flexibility to deliver content independent of coding to a "system".

The CMS is a crutch. It has its place in certain organizations. But it is overkill for many use cases.

In truth, however, we shouldn't be pitting the SSG against the CMS. I believe the next leap of content creation is a mixture of both SSG and classical CMS. Check out the following links:

https://github.com/thyb/contentify https://www.contentful.com/ https://prismic.io/

There is a convergence about to happen between "dynamic" content and the SSG. It could be called CMS as an API.

Re: Static Site Generators

#117

Post by balupton »

bradleyland wrote: post #88
oddevan wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like irony. Is this irony?

It would be a better case of irony if the site were using a static site generator instead of a web app. That sounds a little unlikely though: "Site about statis site generators taken down by static site generator scaling issues."

The site uses DocPad, a static site generator.

The downtime was caused by the YAML file having invalid syntax so it would not parse. Whenever a modification to the YAML file is made, a github post hook is sent to the server telling it to regenerate the website.

Normally this happens smoothly without anyone noticing any downtime, while maintaing awesome performance.

In this case because of the bad YAML, DocPad crashed, as it was told to, and the logs showed the error.

I was sleeping at the time so did not notice the issue.

The latest version of the website now handles this gracefully, using the latest successful data if the YAML is bad, as well as showing an error message.

Re: Static Site Generators

#118

Post by danbee »

allenlsy wrote: post #62
rmc wrote: post #52

Is there any static site generators for photos? Something like "host your own flickr"? Something that uses exif tags, directory hierarchy, etc to make a static browsable list of your photos?

If you are familiar with Jekyll, I have made a plugin for Jekyll, for easy album generation. You just need to put your photos in a folder, and the web page can be generated. But you need to customise the theme yourself.

Could you post a link to your plugin?

Re: Static Site Generators

#119

Post by stevekemp »

wldlyinaccurate wrote: post #81
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…

Usually that can be achieved with a cache like Varnish. One of the biggest benefits of static site generators is that the only software you need on your server is a web server. As soon as you want to start adding things like search and comments, you lose that benefit.

I hacked up a simple commenting system for my static site, modelled after disqus but far less featureful:

http://github.com/skx/e-comments/

As used on http://tweaked.io/

Re: Static Site Generators

#120

Post by stevekemp »

fractalsea wrote: post #72

I didn't see Hakyll [1] on the list. It is a minimal static site generator written in Haskell. I have just set it up for my first personal site [2]. It is my first experience using a static site generator, and so far I can highly recommend giving it a go. [1] http://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/ [2] http://willsewell.name

When I was reviewing existing static site generators I couldn't make Hakyll install - but this was back under Squeeze (Debian).

https://github.com/skx/static-site-generators

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