Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing
smashingmagazine.com
Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing
1–10 of 187 posts
Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing
#2I've been a fan of static websites for a long while now.
In addition to page load issues, they also more or less completely solve the Slashdot effect (aka the Reddit Hug Of Death, these days). A competently-configured Nginx server on a 512mb VPS, serving static-only content, will handle ridiculous amounts of traffic without flinching.
Ever since a front-page mention on BoingBoing took down my feature film BloodSpell's site immediately after release in 2007, avoiding server load on a site has been high-priority for anything I'm launching that is likely to have bursty traffic.
It's nice to see usable tools for managing larger sites with a static generator developing and becoming popular.
Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing
#3The only problem I feel this really solves is caching, and for that specific problem, generating static pages may be a (work-aroundy) solution to consider, but in general I don't think static website generators are going to be the next big thing...
When you look at page speed, not much of the slow-down is from servers delivering pages, but browsers having to digest HTML/CSS/IMG/JS
I guess it all depends on what you are trying to achieve. Thanks as always for the article, interesting to see someone taking this with both hands.
Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing
#4I would be equally interested if the article was titled "Why Static Website Generators Are Awesome". They are not the "next big thing", they've been around for years.
Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing
#5The only problem I feel this really solves is caching, and for that specific problem, generating static pages may be a (work-aroundy) solution to consider, but in general I don't think static website generators are going to be the next big thing... When you look at page speed, not much of the slow-down is from servers delivering pages, but browsers having to digest HTML/CSS/IMG/JS I guess it all depends on what you a…
I think you're vastly overestimating how well engineered most SME web-platforms are when you say that the client-side is slower than the server side. There are a huge number of server-side asp.NET webforms/JSP/php sites out there which are far slower server side than client side.
And it's not just legacy code, new applications in 2015 are still using those mostly server side technologies without too much done on the front-end.
Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing
#6Ok, "static" here means no RDBMS-backed website. But you can still use statically generated JSON resources from a db once off. These resources can then be "filtered" and "combined" without the need for databases (not using the words JOIN or WHERE carefully).
Sounds like a great idea to overcome the need to obsess about connection multi-plexing.
Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing
#7I'm not entirely sure they're the next big thing. More likely, is that 15 years ago, it was people who were used to static sites began moving to dynamically generated ones as sites became more complex. They were the new thing then. Now we have a load of people who have grown up with dynamically generated sites and are suddenly discovering the benefits of static sites - thanks in part to the proliferation of tools that are easy to use.
It's the usual boomerang cycle of discovery and adoption.
Both types of sites have their benefits and it's a balancing act to use the right tool for the job. It's getting this right that comes with experience and an understanding of the current pitfalls of each. It's the rough edges that push people in the other direction and without the experience of the pitfalls of each, it's inevitable that people start predicting that one solves all the problems facing the other.
I fully expect the usual over reliance on the wrong type of tech for the sake of it being the current hotness and then an over correction in the other direction the moment we have a new generation of developers.
Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing
#8I am working on a project, http://blogful.me, that combines a hosted static blog generator with a solid admin backend including post syndication, an embedded analytics dashboard, authoring tools, and an API if you don't want to use the frontend.
There definitely appears to be a lot of interest in this space because you get the best of all worlds. Static site generators definitely seem like the way to go for all but actual web applications.
Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing
#9Next to geosites.com, I suppose.
Re: Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing
#10Haven't done any benchmarks myself, but I'd be keen to find out if a static site loaded up with JS design elements, a product store, comments and analytics code would load any quicker than a CMS with PHP caching, system caching and microcaching to handle bursts on a lightweight webserver such as Nginx.
The article is frustratingly biased in this regard. Static sites should just play to their strengths, otherwise you probably want a CMS that will act like a static site when it needs to.