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Static Site Generator (SSG) as a Free Squarespace Alternative?

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Re: Static Site Generator (SSG) as a Free Squarespace Alternative?

#11

Post by solardev »

MaximilianKohlr wrote: post #10
solardev wrote: post #9

I work for a CMS company (but not one of the ones OP mentioned), and many of our customers use SSGs. FWIW, I think there's some good findings in the OP and the follow-up comment. That said, IMO, they're not the best solution for: > I'm a novice with no expertise in website building or design. SSGs don't prioritize ease of use, necessarily, but simplicity and cost of hosting. If your only goal is to get a very simple…

I appreciate your insight. Using MKDocs Material with Netlify has been very smooth and easy though. I wouldn't even recommend one of the other WYSIWYG builder sites to a novice if they wanted a documentation site. There's got to be something similar for personal & business sites. I'm also hosting my own forum now, and while that was more complicated to get set up, I find it completely doable.

Awesome! Nothing wrong with self-hosting if that's what you like to do, or want to learn.

It might not be the best option for small businesses with limited time, since webpages are so cheap these days. Paying a vendor $20/mo is much less cost than paying an employee for even an hour. I've seen too many "orphaned" sites to recommend DIY webpages to regular small businesses by default anymore, where simpler vendor solutions exist. But that's just one use case.

On the other hand, many people here, myself included, got started in our careers by setting up similar self-hosted options and learning about the technologies. Plus, as you said, for certain use cases (documentation) there are certainly more specialized options available than what Squarespace would give you.

Choosing the right tools for the job is half the fun!

Re: Static Site Generator (SSG) as a Free Squarespace Alternative?

#12

Post by giaour »

MaximilianKohlr wrote: post #7
mikece wrote: post #4

Looks like someone is writing a blog post on HN instead of liking to a blog post from HN...

It would be appropriate for someone with a tech blog. I'm not a "techie", nor do I have a tech blog. I'm seeking advice from knowledgeable people. See my other recent comment.

You now know how to make and host a tech blog for free with a SSG, so have at it! :)

Re: Static Site Generator (SSG) as a Free Squarespace Alternative?

#13

Post by solardev »

MaximilianKohlr wrote: post #2

# Email contact forms: One feature SSGs are missing is email contact forms. Some of them use Netlify forms https://www.netlify.com/platform/core/forms/ - 100 submissions per site /month ($19+ when exceeded). https://docs.netlify.com/accounts-and-billing/billing-faq/ Hugo's Piko theme uses FormSubmit.io (free) or Fabform.io ($5/mo). But I haven't tested that to understand how well it works and why/how it's free. Hugo'…

The forms thing in particular is one thing I see come up a lot, especially as people are moving from Netlify to Vercel, which doesn't yet have a first-party forms solution.

In a way, it's just an extension of a default weakness of Jamsites to begin with: their inability to deal with dynamic user-generated content (comments, likes, etc.). The whole point of static generation is "write-rarely, read-often", and user-generated content upsets that paradigm.

If you just need a contact form, that's easy enough to outsource to another vendor/solution, because the submission doesn't necessarily have to update (your) database.

Google Forms is totally free, BTW, and can easily email you responses and/or save them to a spreadsheet: https://www.google.com/forms/about/

Where it gets tricky is you actually do want a form that updates your own database. Since you don't have a full backend, you don't have a form handler. But that's easy enough to implement with an API route (in Next, Astro, etc.) or a serverless function... it just has to receive a webhook, validate, and then POST to your CMS.

Re: Static Site Generator (SSG) as a Free Squarespace Alternative?

#16

Post by MaximilianKohlr »

seanwilson wrote: post #15

What's wrong with Decap? How much flexibility do you need? Live previews would be nice but it's good enough for a lot of sites.

It doesn't look like something you can design a site with. It looks like something that allows you to do minor edits to an existing site.

Re: Static Site Generator (SSG) as a Free Squarespace Alternative?

#17

Post by MaximilianKohlr »

mobilio wrote: post #14

I'm in same dilemma... that's why now i'm using Bootstrap Studio. This is desktop application for developing static sites.

Interesting! $30 and free forms https://bootstrapstudio.io/forms.

It looks similar to TeleportHQ.

Re: Static Site Generator (SSG) as a Free Squarespace Alternative?

#18

Post by seanwilson »

MaximilianKohlr wrote: post #16
seanwilson wrote: post #15

What's wrong with Decap? How much flexibility do you need? Live previews would be nice but it's good enough for a lot of sites.

It doesn't look like something you can design a site with. It looks like something that allows you to do minor edits to an existing site.

You can compose a site from content blocks in Decap similar to how you'd do it with Advanced Custom Fields in WordPress, but you'll either need a theme created with that in mind or make your own theme. It's enough for lots of typical simple business websites.

https://tina.io/ is another open source CMS you can look at. You need to host the CMS part yourself or use their hosting (there's a free tier). I'd love more open source solutions like Decap that don't involve hosting anything and don't involve paid per-user subscriptions but I don't know of any.

Also, I've seen https://formspree.io/plans used HTML contact forms. 50 free submissions per month with simple integration.

Re: Static Site Generator (SSG) as a Free Squarespace Alternative?

#19

Post by mobilio »

MaximilianKohlr wrote: post #17
mobilio wrote: post #14

I'm in same dilemma... that's why now i'm using Bootstrap Studio. This is desktop application for developing static sites.

Interesting! $30 and free forms https://bootstrapstudio.io/forms . It looks similar to TeleportHQ.

I love one thing... first you can create subfolders there and put there pages. Second - it comes with free and unlimited hosting space. Third - it's extremely easy for novices to open ready templates and within few hours to make sites.

Now bad news - it's Electron App. Second - sometimes it's extremely limited (in order to save novices from mistakes). Third - can't create responsive images with few resolutions.

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