Do you suggest static site generators to your customers? How has your experience been with this? What are the services you use for a complete setup?
Ask HN: Do you suggest static site generators to your customers?
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Re: Ask HN: Do you suggest static site generators to your customers?
#2If the client is somewhat technical, and doesn't mind mucking around in markdown and the occasional html then sure, why not? But most of my clients prefer having a simple to use backend for updating the site.
Re: Ask HN: Do you suggest static site generators to your customers?
#3If the client is somewhat technical, and doesn't mind mucking around in markdown and the occasional html then sure, why not? But most of my clients prefer having a simple to use backend for updating the site.
But can a web-based updater can still generate a static back-end?
Re: Ask HN: Do you suggest static site generators to your customers?
#4No. It's very easy/cheap to setup something like wordpress. Teaching a client how to generate a static site is dificult and clients will have to go back to the documentation if they don't use it for a while. If you have a ui you only have to remember the /admin url and everything else is just looking at the screen and clicking the right thing.
Re: Ask HN: Do you suggest static site generators to your customers?
#5If the client is somewhat technical, and doesn't mind mucking around in markdown and the occasional html then sure, why not? But most of my clients prefer having a simple to use backend for updating the site.
But can a web-based updater can still generate a static back-end?
Depends what you mean by "static" at this point. I've created sites that were updated infrequently, and so I wrote a script to build out a static mirror of the site after updating. By exposing only the static mirror you get the best of both worlds. For a higher end setup, you can run a static caching layer on the HTTP server netting you the same performance benefits but without manually building the mirrored version.
Re: Ask HN: Do you suggest static site generators to your customers?
#6If the client is somewhat technical, and doesn't mind mucking around in markdown and the occasional html then sure, why not? But most of my clients prefer having a simple to use backend for updating the site.
But can a web-based updater can still generate a static back-end?
There already exists some nice projects for this, like https://www.netlifycms.org/
Re: Ask HN: Do you suggest static site generators to your customers?
#7If the client is somewhat technical, and doesn't mind mucking around in markdown and the occasional html then sure, why not? But most of my clients prefer having a simple to use backend for updating the site.
But can a web-based updater can still generate a static back-end?
Will be interesting to see when the next generation of "content APIs" hit - client updates a field in a backend somewhere and it rolls out to static sites, apps, bots etc... all over.
Re: Ask HN: Do you suggest static site generators to your customers?
#8No. It's very easy/cheap to setup something like wordpress. Teaching a client how to generate a static site is dificult and clients will have to go back to the documentation if they don't use it for a while. If you have a ui you only have to remember the /admin url and everything else is just looking at the screen and clicking the right thing.
a static site CMS would provide the same functionality. Something like https://forestry.io/
Re: Ask HN: Do you suggest static site generators to your customers?
#9Re: Ask HN: Do you suggest static site generators to your customers?
#10No. It's very easy/cheap to setup something like wordpress. Teaching a client how to generate a static site is dificult and clients will have to go back to the documentation if they don't use it for a while. If you have a ui you only have to remember the /admin url and everything else is just looking at the screen and clicking the right thing.
The issue with any dynamic site is security. You can't set up Wordpress and forget about it. There has to be some mechanism for updating to the latest version for security (which may break any plugins/themes).