Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing • Hacker News Board

Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing

#11

Post by UK-AL » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 1:32 PM UTC

eterm wrote: post #5

Loque wrote: post #3

The only problem I feel this really solves is caching, and for that specific problem, generating static pages may be a (work-aroundy) solution to consider, but in general I don't think static website generators are going to be the next big thing... When you look at page speed, not much of the slow-down is from servers delivering pages, but browsers having to digest HTML/CSS/IMG/JS I guess it all depends on what you a…

I think you're vastly overestimating how well engineered most SME web-platforms are when you say that the client-side is slower than the server side. There are a huge number of server-side asp.NET webforms/JSP/php sites out there which are far slower server side than client side. And it's not just legacy code, new applications in 2015 are still using those mostly server side technologies without too much done on the…

And thank god, these new js heavy frontends really hammer the performance of browsers and are often buggy.

Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing

#12

Post by willholloway » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 1:35 PM UTC

Loque wrote: post #3

The only problem I feel this really solves is caching, and for that specific problem, generating static pages may be a (work-aroundy) solution to consider, but in general I don't think static website generators are going to be the next big thing... When you look at page speed, not much of the slow-down is from servers delivering pages, but browsers having to digest HTML/CSS/IMG/JS I guess it all depends on what you a…

The more important problem it solves is security. Caching can easily be handled by adding something like Cloudflare in front.

What local static site generation with html,js,css pushed to remote server solves is giant problem of insecure code.

> more than 70% of today’s WordPress installations are vulnerable to known exploits (and WordPress powers more than 23% of the web).

I did some consulting for a company that was being destroyed by wordpress installations being hacked. When they first started offering wordpress for a blog option (blogs were not their main offering) the threat profile was different. Fast forward six years and they were getting hacked daily.

I recommended that they move their wordpress blogs to flywheel, and have flywheel manage wordpress for them. It worked and they were able to focus on their main offering, the real reason customers were paying them.

Services like flywheel are one answer to the problem of insecure CMS code. The other, and better in my opinion for a lot of sites is to run the CMS locally, keep the database local, and push the rendered code to the server.

Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing

#13

Post by mariusz79 » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 1:37 PM UTC

luxpir wrote: post #10

Haven't done any benchmarks myself, but I'd be keen to find out if a static site loaded up with JS design elements, a product store, comments and analytics code would load any quicker than a CMS with PHP caching, system caching and microcaching to handle bursts on a lightweight webserver such as Nginx. The article is frustratingly biased in this regard. Static sites should just play to their strengths, otherwise you…

It's not even about performance as it is about security. Imagine having to install only basic web server, with no database server and X language interpreter.No need to worry about sql injection and such. And you get performance boost for free.

Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing

#14

Post by amelius » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 1:40 PM UTC

Does this mean that developers and admins will get paid less, because their jobs just got a lot simpler?

Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing

#15

Post by pjmlp » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 1:41 PM UTC

eterm wrote: post #5

Loque wrote: post #3

The only problem I feel this really solves is caching, and for that specific problem, generating static pages may be a (work-aroundy) solution to consider, but in general I don't think static website generators are going to be the next big thing... When you look at page speed, not much of the slow-down is from servers delivering pages, but browsers having to digest HTML/CSS/IMG/JS I guess it all depends on what you a…

I think you're vastly overestimating how well engineered most SME web-platforms are when you say that the client-side is slower than the server side. There are a huge number of server-side asp.NET webforms/JSP/php sites out there which are far slower server side than client side. And it's not just legacy code, new applications in 2015 are still using those mostly server side technologies without too much done on the…

Given that the browser should be about interactive documents, that is how it should be.

Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing

#16

Post by AnkhMorporkian » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 1:43 PM UTC

You know what I've always wanted, but my searches have led me to believe that it (inexplicably) doesn't exist?

I want a simple site generator. I don't want markdown, I don't want a fancy templating engine. I want some simple templating system that takes in normal HTML and generates pages from simple templates I define. I want to shove in some arbitrary HTML and have it spit out a site using some base templates.

To the best of my knowledge, that doesn't exist. It would be perfect for someone like me who wants to keep a website updated, but doesn't always want to run PHP on the server for something as simple as that.

I implemented a shoddy version of it on my own, but it's far from ideal. I'm pretty astounded there's not a well thought out version of it out there, considering how useful it seems it would be.

Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing

#17

Post by notacoward » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

ak39 wrote: post #6

Ok, "static" here means no RDBMS-backed website. But you can still use statically generated JSON resources from a db once off. These resources can then be "filtered" and "combined" without the need for databases (not using the words JOIN or WHERE carefully). Sounds like a great idea to overcome the need to obsess about connection multi-plexing.

"Statically generated JSON resources" implies client-side rendering, and I suspect you'd find some disagreement over whether that's really static. If there's only one such resource per page, then maybe, though you'd still be losing some advantages wrt caching. If the JS running on the client has to fetch many such resources and stitch them together, then it's functionally equivalent to a standard dynamic website and shares many of its drawbacks. Sure, you distribute some of the top-level logic to clients, but the server still has to find each of those individual resources and that's basically the same load as a DB (if not worse as files).

The reason many people (including me) have gone to static generators is not just the static part but the generator part as well. It's not just static but preprocessed, no further operations necessary except to deliver dead bits. That captures all of the caching, security, and other advantages in a way that hybrid approaches tend not to.

Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing

#18

Post by luxpir » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 1:53 PM UTC

mariusz79 wrote: post #13

luxpir wrote: post #10

Haven't done any benchmarks myself, but I'd be keen to find out if a static site loaded up with JS design elements, a product store, comments and analytics code would load any quicker than a CMS with PHP caching, system caching and microcaching to handle bursts on a lightweight webserver such as Nginx. The article is frustratingly biased in this regard. Static sites should just play to their strengths, otherwise you…

It's not even about performance as it is about security. Imagine having to install only basic web server, with no database server and X language interpreter.No need to worry about sql injection and such. And you get performance boost for free.

Accepted that SQL security is pretty optimal with statics. How about security of your data when buying through 3rd party JS stores, commenting through 3rd party add-ons, being tracked by 3rd party snippets, etc.

Hard to deny that the additional functionality most people end up wanting beyond a simple online journal brings additional security risks, whatever the framework.

Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing

#19

Post by Ideabile » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 1:55 PM UTC

I think that Static Website Generators, aren't by them self the next big thing. Mostly is about how the codebase influence on the content of the website, and use the the power of the existing versioning tools is indeed an advantage. Instead by them self are quite limited.

IMO, they are the next big thing if their are contextualised in Micro Service Structure, so that's why I build Monera - http://github.com/Ideabile/monera

What you think?

Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing

#20

Post by pistle » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 1:59 PM UTC

... Next Big Thing For Minimally Dynamic Sites

If your content doesn't change frequently and/or the costs of regenerating the static content is minimized for you, great.

At what point do we see static sites take a fair share of the top-X-trafficked sites? Top 100? 1000? 1,000,000?

This is probably great for a small corp's info site... but then the client asks for a contact form or members/admin secured area, and there we go down the rabbit hole again.