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The Static Site Paradox

kristoff.it

91–100 of 370 posts

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#91

Strongly agree. Wordpress brags as powering whatever % of the internet... but if youve ever taken a look at some of that PHP source code... yikes Mind boggling to me such an overly complex system has such a large market share. I'll take my Gatsby TypeScript React components / > any day

If they calculated the % in terms of CPU time used, they could have made the claim even more impressive.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#92

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…

That's sort of the idea behind a Wiki, isn't it?

There was an effort many years ago to provide browser extensions that allowed users to mark up, edit, and annotate existing web pages in a way that would be visible to the community of users. It never went anywhere, unfortunately, probably because it would have gored way too many sacred oxen. (And/or it would have been co-opted by spammers, turning it into a social networking/reputation management project.)

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#93

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 have been cursing for a long time over the death of Frontpage. Yeah we made fun of it because the HTML it created was/is awful. But what it also was was a program that normal businesses/people could use to update a small and cheap website without having to worry about security beyond picking a good password.

I have been looking for a good alternative that can create more correct HTML and which gives you more options than Words HTML exporter for a couple years now.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#94

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…

The term you're looking for exists: user agent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent

What you describe came and went, subsumed under the homogenizing effect of silos like Facebook. Mashups were the big new thing. There have been various attempts to bring it back, but the inertia of silos makes it hard to find anyone interested.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#95

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…

I don't think so. Comments used to be a big deal, but these days you sign up to handle a lot of spam and moderation issues.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#97

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…

Yeah, that was a good idea 30 years ago, now the web will fill to the brim with spam and AI-generated drivel, all in approximately 14 minutes.

Nowadays it's more important than ever to curate content well.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#98

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…

Can't you just spin up an imageboard instance and put a button at the bottom of an article?

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#99

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…

I think that was true during the age of the blog, but far less so now.

Comments and discussion of a post are to be found on third-party communities like Reddit, HN, or even Facebook. How many of us scan the list of comments under, say, a Substack post vs. will scroll through a page or two of HN comments for the same post?

IMO it's a foregone conclusion that a discussion on HN will be higher quality for a tech-related post than a comment chain on a specific post, since HN has already attracted a wider set of readers than 99.9% of all blogs.

The main advantage of commenting directly on a blog post is that the author is far more likely to see it vs. the ephemeral state of the post being on the HN front-page.

Re: The Static Site Paradox

#100
> And so, while we software engineers enjoy free hosting & custom domain support with GitHub Pages / Cloudflare Pages / etc

Oh come on! You don't really expect that to last, do you?

Learned back in 2004 that it's better to pay than to rely on free services. I pay for source code repositories, email, web hosting, etc.

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