Re: Static Site Generator

Posted by Owen Densmore on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Static-Site-Generator-tp7586757p7586773.html

On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 9:31 AM, Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Is generator the right word?

​Yes. It's called that because you do an initial setup which establishes the basic layout of the site. Then when you add content, Markdown files generally, ​you run a CLI tool that generates your basic HTML/CSS/Javascript site.

It is only "static" in that there is no code on the server that is run, no databases, php, etc. Just plain HTML/CSS/Javascript. This makes them *very* fast, but more important, simple enough that you use the tools you used as a developer: node, javascript, canvas/webgl, and so on.

There are no mysteries. You know what is happening, and how. All the "dynanics" is done off-line and the user of the site suffers no silly delays caused by php/sql/etc. And they can be far more dynamic than you'd think. Comments are possible. AJAX allows "dynamic" access to content. But still no more than an HTTP server needed.

And you can run it anywhere: Dropbox, Amazon S3, GitHub Pages and many more that simply provide HTTP access to your data.

I like the cultural aspect as well: when things get too complicated, they implode under their own weight. I believe this is happening with websites & CMSs. Folks are sick of the complexity of WordPress and they realize that they really don't need 80% of their far-too-many features.

   -- Owen

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