Live data from Hacker News

Creating a minimalist blog with Jekyll Now

vdf.dev

81–90 of 94 posts

Re: Creating a minimalist blog with Jekyll Now

#81
post #12

The real problem with any SSG is where to host and edit Markdown files and images for flexible spur of the moment content creation. I've built my own Wordpress-export-to-static solution to use the native iOS App as a workaround but it feels somewhat clunky — Same with having to run a headless CMS for this in the background; Surprisingly with all the gazillion of MD editors, no one has ever built one with live editing…

I'm going to add my personal take on this issue since I'm currently running a blog that's markdown-ish powered.

In my opinion the best solution is to find some sort of happy medium. Static site generators are excellent in terms of weight and speed but a lightweight file based CMS can be almost as fast while still providing the needed flexibility.

My site currently runs on Kirby (https://getkirby.com) but I write almost everything on iA both on my Mac while I'm at home and on my phone while I'm outside.

Updating the site is not as simple as typing a command on a terminal but it's just a few clicks on a very simple and minimal UI.

Images are hosted on my server like the rest of the content. It's a simply DO snippet with no fancy configuration.

If you want to go down a more automated solution, iA comes with support for micropub so you could in theory set it up so that you can upload a new post without leaving the iA interface.

But imo it's a lot of extra backend setup that needs to be monitored to save very little time in the long run so for me it's personally not worth it.

Re: Creating a minimalist blog with Jekyll Now

#82
post #59

I wanted to do something similar, but I found Jekyll quite bloated. Pelican didn't work for syntax highlighting. I found Hugo the best. My current stack is Hugo with terminal theme hosted on GitHub pages.

Yeah, and if you ever wish to bloat up your Hugo install, there's always Hugo extended for that.

Re: Creating a minimalist blog with Jekyll Now

#83
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Windows users, DocxManager ( https://docxmanager.com ) the Word-document-based static site generator which supports S/FTP uploading (and S3 soon) will be expanded to be a tabbed markdown editor in the near future. Yes, I'm the developer ;)

People will gladly use classes from tailwind such as mt-1 (margin top 0.25rem) but they will freak out when they see the MsoNormal class. Is there a way to make the styles of the exported site look less like a word export? Don't get me wrong, amazing work anyway, I just wanted to give some constructive criticism.

@patates, Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I actually noticed the issue, and I do want to address the issue with an appropriate approach (but it still needs more thoughts). Of all the css frameworks tailwind is definitely the best fit as far as I see it, thanks to it's "utility first" concept.

Re: Creating a minimalist blog with Jekyll Now

#84
post #12

The real problem with any SSG is where to host and edit Markdown files and images for flexible spur of the moment content creation. I've built my own Wordpress-export-to-static solution to use the native iOS App as a workaround but it feels somewhat clunky — Same with having to run a headless CMS for this in the background; Surprisingly with all the gazillion of MD editors, no one has ever built one with live editing…

I ended up picking hexo [0], as the hexo admin plugin [1] provides a nice localhost CMS/editor that supports image pasting, tag editing etc (could be hosted online too for remote/mobile access, but wouldn't be truly static/server-less at that point).

> but it feels somewhat clunky

Yeah, still feels like there should be _something_ better out there

[0] https://hexo.io/

[1] https://github.com/jaredly/hexo-admin

Re: Creating a minimalist blog with Jekyll Now

#85
post #12

The real problem with any SSG is where to host and edit Markdown files and images for flexible spur of the moment content creation. I've built my own Wordpress-export-to-static solution to use the native iOS App as a workaround but it feels somewhat clunky — Same with having to run a headless CMS for this in the background; Surprisingly with all the gazillion of MD editors, no one has ever built one with live editing…

> The real problem with any SSG is where to host and edit Markdown files and images for flexible spur of the moment content creation.

I'm with you there. I have a shortcut to a Google Drive on my phone homescreen that I use as my notebook that's worked out for me. I also have a reMarkable that I've been writing a lot on, but retyping everything has been a point of friction (and my handwriting is apparently so bad that OCR is only ~70% accurate and it takes about as much time to fix as to just retype it

Re: Creating a minimalist blog with Jekyll Now

#86
post #55
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Just use Github to write. 2. Gatsby.js can sync with most CMSs.

Doesn't solve the problem with assets.

a couple years back, github added an 'upload' button when browsing your own repo from the web.

Re: Creating a minimalist blog with Jekyll Now

#87
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me think, a Telegram-bot-as-a-CMS would work great for micro blogging.

What is old is new again. This exact idea has floated for pretty much all messaging protocols that have had some kind of programmabilty already. We can even imagine an email-based microblogging hack. Edit your boop (that's the new tweet) in your favorite MUA: the subject is the short text, the body is the long text. You can even put images and attachements in there. Send yourself this message, with a well-known prefi…

Tumblr used to have this.

Re: Creating a minimalist blog with Jekyll Now

#89
post #54
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a cronjob on my vps that pulls the repo every 20 minutes, and if there are changes builds and uploads the site. I don’t write on mobile but if I would, I’d use iA Writer + Working Copy

Doesn't solve the problem with assets.

Well, it does for me as I stuff the assets into the git repo too. Or is the issue with the previews? That's one thing I haven't been able to figure out. (currently I just run the dev server and look on the generated website, but the iA writer preview is image-less)

Re: Creating a minimalist blog with Jekyll Now

#90
Old school perhaps, but most everything here feels wildly overengineered for a static site. If the site is truly static, then there's no need for any server or client web languages at all. You need HTML (with perhaps some sort of generator), CSS, and e.g. rsync.

I've been doing mine with http://zim-wiki.org for years

Post reply on HN