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The Static Site Paradox

kristoff.it

131–140 of 370 posts

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#131

The killer app of WordPress is comments. No SSG, almost by definition, allows comments; WordPress blogs almost always come with them built in. If you want something like Hugo to really take off in the blogging sphere, all you need to do is create some good looking themes with comments . Figure that out at scale - maybe by using per-blog sharded SQLite, which you can host as a third party for pennies on the dollar - a…

Disqus solved this for a while, but they did various things over the years to push people away: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disqus#Criticism,_privacy,_and...

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=%22disqus%22

Facebook offered a commenting system a lot of sites used, but it also lost trust and reach with its scandals.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#132
Yep, definitely agree. I've started a couple sites recently and quickly found that while I was happy just generating them with an SSG and slapping them up online, as soon as I wanted to collaborate with others the SSG had to go right out the window in favor of WordPress. It's not that SSGs can't be collaborative, mind you, it's that it's far easier to give someone a limited-access login to a WP site and let them contribute articles than it is to try to teach someone who isn't a programmer how to navigate adding things to an SSG.

Consider what's needed for someone non-programmer-y to use an SSG:

* Download a copy of the repository and install the SSG tooling, then fire up the SSG in listening mode so they can see their changes. * Write out the Markdown for their page. Oh, hope you have short-codes in place for things like images-next-to-paragraphs, info callouts, common page structures (cards, hero blocks, buttons), and so forth. If not, either they'll have to pause and get you to work with them to have them implemented, or they'll have to figure out writing the templates required. Regardless, once the bits are implemented in the site the writer has to work in the arcane short-code format markup required to include them. * Now they've got their changes, they need to figure out how to stage them — either they need to zip up the whole working directory and send it to you to sort out, or they get to learn how to commit a pull-request to a Git repository.

I don't mind doing all of that — it's quite enjoyable to figure out, and I get the chance to structure things exactly as I like them. But trying to teach a theatre director accustomed to writing in Google Docs how to do all of that? Nope. Which then turns into, "here, I wrote this out in G-Docs — hope you can figure out how to turn that into a site page!".

I really do wish there were a better competitor to WordPress, something that offered the ability to lift the hood and customize more easily. There are some CMS front-ends to SSGs, but the last I checked they either were more "CMS" in the sense of "put stuff in database and this will render it" or they still weren't particularly user-friendly (or were abandoned).

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#133
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grate post! Hey, check my websight about "WordPress blogs" at https://www.sevarg.net/ I think youll like it! ;) Are you sure comments are still desirable? Isn't step 1 of the internet anymore "Never read the comments"? That said, I did actually work out a solution for "static site with dynamic comments" on my blog that could easily be done for a lot of people if they're willing to use a hosted service. Discourse (the…

>Are you sure comments are still desirable? Isn't step 1 of the internet anymore "Never read the comments"? It very much depends on who you ask. As a reader, I always check the comments on an article. It's easily 75% of the fun of the Internet to me, more so if it's a shitshow. I can understand not everyone feels the same. I've been hearing for years from many different people how Twitter is a garbage dump, but to me…

Of course if you ask this question 3 levels deep in a comment thread this is the kind of answers you are going to get; survivor bias.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#134

The killer app of WordPress is comments. No SSG, almost by definition, allows comments; WordPress blogs almost always come with them built in. If you want something like Hugo to really take off in the blogging sphere, all you need to do is create some good looking themes with comments . Figure that out at scale - maybe by using per-blog sharded SQLite, which you can host as a third party for pennies on the dollar - a…

The killer app for Wordpress isn’t comments, it’s their plugin ecosystem. Everything you’d spend a weekend configuring in Hugo has a plugin in Wordpress that your mom could enable in two clicks.

I use Hugo myself, but the user experience is much friendlier in Wordpress even if the footprint is unnecessary from an engineering perspective.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#135

The killer app of WordPress is comments. No SSG, almost by definition, allows comments; WordPress blogs almost always come with them built in. If you want something like Hugo to really take off in the blogging sphere, all you need to do is create some good looking themes with comments . Figure that out at scale - maybe by using per-blog sharded SQLite, which you can host as a third party for pennies on the dollar - a…

You can use GitHub issues for each blog post and then use it for comments. See here: https://www.richyhbm.co.uk/posts/using-github-issues-as-comm...

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#137
It’s not really a paradox when you consider the UX from the website owner’s perspective. Wordpress makes things stupid simple to do, even if it has way more overhead.

It’s only a paradox if you think the trade off is spending time configuring things. No, the alternative for most people would be to pay someone to set up their website.

If someone set up a WYSIWYG editor for Hugo that goes from domain registration to published site in a few clicks they’d make a fortune.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#138

In 2016, I was working at an agency making brochureware for local businesses. I remember one of our clients wanted us to add a small iframe for a reservation system to their website they had built. They sent us a single word document. Turns out they were just exporting it as HTML (which it seems like Word does still support today!) and throwing it onto some cheap shared web hosting provider. It worked great for them.…

I mean, isn't the whole idea of a web browser kind of contrary to the ideals of the web? It implicitly divides people into speakers and listeners. In a parallel universe, web browsers are called webitors, and they can edit websites as well as view them. People can suggest changes. People can publish annotations. Web hosting is like email--pick (or build) any service you like and pick (or build) any client you like. T…

I don't think that's true - Figma runs in the browser, so does HN.

The job of the browser is to _render_. That's agnostic on whether you're creating content or just reading it.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#139

It’s not really a paradox when you consider the UX from the website owner’s perspective. Wordpress makes things stupid simple to do, even if it has way more overhead. It’s only a paradox if you think the trade off is spending time configuring things. No, the alternative for most people would be to pay someone to set up their website. If someone set up a WYSIWYG editor for Hugo that goes from domain registration to pu…

You just described Micro.blog[1], don't you?

[1] https://micro.blog

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#140

It’s not really a paradox when you consider the UX from the website owner’s perspective. Wordpress makes things stupid simple to do, even if it has way more overhead. It’s only a paradox if you think the trade off is spending time configuring things. No, the alternative for most people would be to pay someone to set up their website. If someone set up a WYSIWYG editor for Hugo that goes from domain registration to pu…

>>> If someone set up a WYSIWYG editor for Hugo that goes from domain registration to published site in a few clicks they’d make a fortune.

Isn't this what companies like Netlify, Squarespace and Github Pages does? I know with Netlify, you can transfer a parked domain, pick a template and it does a majority of the config for you and you're up and running in a few mins and then it takes about 24 hours for the domain to go through.

I get what you're saying though, even with those companies who are close to what you're talking about, taking care of those minor middlemen steps would be a boon to someone who could figure it out.

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