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The Static Site Paradox

kristoff.it

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Re: The Static Site Paradox

#21

Post by jraph »

lqet wrote: post #12

> If you didn't know any better, you would expect almost all normal users to have [2] and professional engineers to have something like [1], but it's actually the inverse: only few professional software engineers can "afford" to have the second option as their personal website, and almost all normal users are stuck with overcomplicated solutions. I am confused, the inverse would be that professional engineers have [2…

I suppose they meant that only a few people, who are professional software engineers, can afford the second option.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#22

Post by pjmlp »

kristoff_it wrote: post #18
pjmlp wrote: post #11

> When I published SuperHTML, I discovered that it was the first ever language server for HTML that reported diagnostics to the user. I wrote a blog post about it, it got on the frontpage of Hacker News and nobody corrected me, so you know it's true. Probably because this is something most IDEs have been doing for years, before Microsoft came up with LSP.

Of all the most popular editors, I think none of them had a way of offering diagnostics for vanilla HTML. The only exception that I know of is Webstorm. Vim, Neovim, Helix, Zed, VSCode all shared the same basic implementation that has no diagnostics support. Helix will have SuperHTML enabled by default starting from the next release: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/11609

I wrote IDEs not editors, and I am quite sure that the years doing ASP.NET and Java EE/Spring development I had enough HTML diagnostics to fix since 2001.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#23

Post by sofixa »

davedx wrote: post #4

> normal users are stuck with a bunch of greedy clowns that make them pay for every little thing Huh? You're not confined to Automattic or WP-Engine, there are tons and tons of regular web hosting providers with Wordpress and a bunch of other stuff included in a standard hosting package, you can use the free Wordpress, and you can self-host. That's the whole point of Wordpress being open source, and it's working as i…

> Static site generators are used by technologists who want to tinker and check all the boxes in whatever Chrome's latest devtool benchmark tool is called

No? Downloading Hugo, getting a random theme and writing a few articles is pretty simple and requires no more tinkering than doing the same with a Wordpress (okay, one's actions are big buttons in a UI, the other is copy pasting commands, but in terms of effort, there's barely any difference).

I use Hugo because it's light and allows me to have a blog running for free and scale to infinity (I have at least two articles that sat high up on the front page of HN, and there was neither a hug of death nor a bill associated), with zero maintenance, while also having flexibility if I need it. I haven't even checked my score on Google's whatever and I don't care about it.

As for WordPress, none of what you described can be had for free, and it requires ongoing maintenance (updates to keep up with the crappy ecosystem).

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#24

Post by Akronymus »

ninalanyon wrote: post #6
paulpauper wrote: post #2

There is still not a censuses as to the definition of a static website. Is a website without a MYSQL database still static if it has JavaScript or php template include files? A pure static website in which each page has to be manually edited would be a headache.

Surely a static web site is one that could be downloaded with something like wget or curl and would still work by browsing the files directly from the file system without needing an actual web server?

Thats what I expect a static site to be too. Along with preferably as little js as reasonable.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#25

Post by gsck »

paulpauper wrote: post #2

There is still not a censuses as to the definition of a static website. Is a website without a MYSQL database still static if it has JavaScript or php template include files? A pure static website in which each page has to be manually edited would be a headache.

I would say a static website is just one that doesn't do any extra work on the client to generate the content. Either SSR or just plain HTML files

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#26

Post by nikolamus »

davedx wrote: post #4

> normal users are stuck with a bunch of greedy clowns that make them pay for every little thing Huh? You're not confined to Automattic or WP-Engine, there are tons and tons of regular web hosting providers with Wordpress and a bunch of other stuff included in a standard hosting package, you can use the free Wordpress, and you can self-host. That's the whole point of Wordpress being open source, and it's working as i…

people who know how to "self-host" can do it for free or very cheap.

Otherwise WP Engine is $30 per site.

OP says it's not only lame to exploit the knowledge asymmetry in this way but also makes web lame long term because normies don't have tools to contribute effectively.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#27

Post by gryfft »

lqet wrote: post #12

> If you didn't know any better, you would expect almost all normal users to have [2] and professional engineers to have something like [1], but it's actually the inverse: only few professional software engineers can "afford" to have the second option as their personal website, and almost all normal users are stuck with overcomplicated solutions. I am confused, the inverse would be that professional engineers have [2…

If you continue reading, the reasoning is given in the next sentence:

> Weird as it might be, it's not a great mystery why that is: it's easier to spin up a Wordpress blog than it is to figure out by yourself all the intermediate steps.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#28

Post by Normal_gaussian »

lqet wrote: post #12

> If you didn't know any better, you would expect almost all normal users to have [2] and professional engineers to have something like [1], but it's actually the inverse: only few professional software engineers can "afford" to have the second option as their personal website, and almost all normal users are stuck with overcomplicated solutions. I am confused, the inverse would be that professional engineers have [2…

It is indeed written as you say; I suspect - but cannot confirm - that the author meant:

> ... only a few people - professional software engineers - can "afford" ...

which would be the inverse.

However, there is a case for reading as it is written even if it subverts reading expectations, as many (most?) professional software engineers do use COTS systems to publish and only a few have their own sites generated from scratch.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#29

Post by nextlevelwizard »

paulpauper wrote: post #2

There is still not a censuses as to the definition of a static website. Is a website without a MYSQL database still static if it has JavaScript or php template include files? A pure static website in which each page has to be manually edited would be a headache.

Static website serves you everything you need as a one HTML file. You can save the source code and open it offline and there will be no difference.

As such any templating is out of the question if that is done via request from the client.

How I manage my static website is with a build script. I write my content in markdown with a option for custom header and then I have a python script that churns out pure HTML with everything embedded into it which I can then host on github pages.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#30

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

wakeupcall wrote: post #10
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME, the closest definition is simply a site containing flat files only. No server-side scripting, but client-side JavaScript very much allowed. That doesn't necessarily mean 'manually editing' each page, although some writing probably has to be done at some point, unless you're outsourcing that to an LLM...

What about fully client-rendered templates/sites that require JS for visualization? (ie, no graceful degradation at all). Technically static, but absolutely of the worst kind in my opinion.

I totally agree — technically static, but an abomination that should be avoided at all costs!
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