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The Static Site Paradox

kristoff.it

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Re: The Static Site Paradox

#161

Post by neilv »

There is a complicating factor for a Web developer's personal Web site: resumé-driven-development (RDD).

For those professionals who try to use personal side projects for RDD, so that they don't have to sabotage as many employers' projects as they would otherwise.

Which leads me to this morning, for example... For an indie Web site I'm about to launch -- and for which I'm using a popular modern Web framework, mainly for RDD reasons -- I could no longer update my Web site.

Because an NPM package had a Critical security problem, and trying to get the update got NPM stuck with some interdependency conflict that couldn't be resolved automatically. (Which, ironically, prevented pushing the security update to the production site.)

The site could be 5 simple handwritten HTML files, one with a sprinkling of JS inline in it, plus 2 small Perl CGI scripts. And it would work perfectly for 25 years and counting.

Instead, it's 129 NPM packages, frequently needing security updates, and a large tree of cryptic source files (template fragments, TS configurations, handlers), just for the NodeJS part of the site alone.

But doing it the ridiculously complex way is something that professionals can't afford not to do. (For example, having Perl on your resumé would be the kiss of death for employability. The people who didn't throw away your resume for ageism reasons, would still think you must be an idiot for not doing RDD.)

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#162

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

JellyBeanThief wrote: post #79
graypegg wrote: post #68

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…

Back in the day mozilla (the browser, before the mozilla org made firefox) edited html in a wysiwyg fashion. All my early websites were made with it. I never did work out how to remove a

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#163

Post by dimal »

dingnuts wrote: post #157
dimal wrote: post #147

We’re dealing with this big time in Asheville now. When cell service came back at all, everyone had shitty intermittent 3G, and none of the websites we needed for basic survival information would load. A bunch of good people created some text only news sites, and today I noticed that the Buncombe county website finally has a low bandwidth site, but even then when I inspected it, it had 130k of bootstrap css and 50k o…

that situation has had me thinking about getting an amateur radio license again. In a disaster like what happened to Western NC, which encompasses a much greater area than just Asheville, I wouldn't want to rely on anything based on the Internet. You want something with a long wavelength and low power. But it's so inaccessible, and I'm not sure if it's for good reason or not. Connectivity was knocked out from Black M…

What I want is for every smartphone to have an FM radio built in. There are FM radio IC chips available, and apparently some Android phones have them. It seems like a reasonable thing to require smartphones to have them for emergencies. I had to run my car in the beginning, burning precious gas just to hear on the radio what the hell was actually happening.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#164

Post by fegu »

The same (pros use less, consumers pay for more) goes for internet connectivity. A techie knows he will never need or saturate more than, say, 200mbps. While a consumer will see the "200/500/1G" offer and opt for the middle.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#165

Post by TheGoodBarn »

graypegg wrote: post #68

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.…

There was a restaurant I went to in CDMX this summer and their menu was a public preview link to a document in Figma. I couldn't stop laughing at the fact but delighted by how well it just worked. I love this stuff.

I have tons of little single HTML file sites I make from this [Vue template](https://vue-template.spaghet.me/). I also have sites just published as public Notion docs, inline photo libraries from iCloud, etc. Its amazing how easy and available it is to just connect stuff, and how often I want to over complicate things and build something from scratch when I can just link stuff together.

On an aside I also love things like [mmm.page](https://mmm.page/) for quickly stitching together little micro sites or single use sites if I don't have time to do something else. Its fun exploring all these tools

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#166

Post by montefischer »

dimal wrote: post #147

We’re dealing with this big time in Asheville now. When cell service came back at all, everyone had shitty intermittent 3G, and none of the websites we needed for basic survival information would load. A bunch of good people created some text only news sites, and today I noticed that the Buncombe county website finally has a low bandwidth site, but even then when I inspected it, it had 130k of bootstrap css and 50k o…

Do you have links to the text only news sites?

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#167

Post by codazoda »

I tried the SuperHTML on a hand-coded site of mine and it reported only one problem and that problem is incorrect as far as I can tell. It tells me that the `` tag is never opened on an HTML 5 doc with a `` opening tag. The author does say it's not perfect and I probably need to double-check my understanding just to be sure. In any case, it seems like a useful thing and I am also surprised I never thought it was missing.

For those who are like me and don't know the term, "a language server for HTML" is referring to the plugin that evaluates your HTML syntax. That might be a narrow explanation of the tool but that's the basic idea I got from trying it.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#168

Post by rzzzt »

dimal wrote: post #163
dingnuts wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that situation has had me thinking about getting an amateur radio license again. In a disaster like what happened to Western NC, which encompasses a much greater area than just Asheville, I wouldn't want to rely on anything based on the Internet. You want something with a long wavelength and low power. But it's so inaccessible, and I'm not sure if it's for good reason or not. Connectivity was knocked out from Black M…

What I want is for every smartphone to have an FM radio built in. There are FM radio IC chips available, and apparently some Android phones have them. It seems like a reasonable thing to require smartphones to have them for emergencies. I had to run my car in the beginning, burning precious gas just to hear on the radio what the hell was actually happening.

It might be selection bias, but my impression was that it is very hard to find a phone without this feature (going back to the Windows Phone and semi-smart feature phone era as well). The usual downside is that they do not spring to life unless a wired headphone is connected, because the cable is used as the antenna.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#169

Post by dimal »

montefischer wrote: post #166
dimal wrote: post #147

We’re dealing with this big time in Asheville now. When cell service came back at all, everyone had shitty intermittent 3G, and none of the websites we needed for basic survival information would load. A bunch of good people created some text only news sites, and today I noticed that the Buncombe county website finally has a low bandwidth site, but even then when I inspected it, it had 130k of bootstrap css and 50k o…

Do you have links to the text only news sites?

Yeah, I should have posted that. This is the one I use the most:

https://text.bpr.org/

I forgot to save the links to the others.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#170

Post by mwcampbell »

BeetleB wrote: post #115
echoangle wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the worst that can happen when using free hosting? As soon as they start charging money, you just leave for somewhere else. And I say that as someone who is paying for a VPS for hosting (and some other stuff).

That's true for all free stuff. It's a pain to constantly monitor if the service is still free, and a pain to keep migrating. Web hosting is very cheap - especially for static sites. Much easier to pay and forget about it. I've used my provider for 20 years.

I'm curious, which provider have you been using for 20 years?
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