6 ms·

My feeling is that every serious programmer will end up inventing tools like this simply because the overhead of incorporating other people's tools eventually s

My feeling is that every serious programmer will end up inventing tools like this simply because the overhead of incorporating other people's tools eventually starts to overtake the overhead of maintaining one's own system.

wanda 11y ago
Yep. I dare say it's how many currently-popular products came into being.
code4tee 11y ago
:-)
the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
I think that's why we have so many static site generators. However programmers typically end up just making the static site generator which is why there was nothing like Lektor before (to the best of my knowledge at least).
- ngrilly 11y ago
  I remember that Blogger, in the beginning, used to work as a static site generator. You edited your posts in the user interface, and you could publish the result to a static hosting via FTP.
  - escap 11y ago
    https://web.archive.org/web/20020210134317/http://www.blogger.com/howto/newblog.pyra https://web.archive.org/web/20020210134317/http://www.blogge... it was shut down in 2010 http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/2010/01/deprecating-ftp.html http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/2010/01/deprecating-ftp.html
    - ngrilly 11y ago
      I know it was shut down. But I think it's interesting to see how the wheel turned, again.
currysausage 11y ago
Let's not forget that Lektor solves actual problems. Show me another CMS that offers: - Static HTML export with elegant dependency tracking by design (reducing attack vectors and maintenance cost on the frontend server) - Admin interface (I can't tell a non-techie to connect via SSH, fire up vi and run Jekyll) - Flexible content structure (Title/Author/Content doesn't really scale beyond a simple blog) - Elegant design and implementation (I could do anything with WordPress and half a dozen plugins, but I fail to even find a bare-bones theme without kilobytes of code that I will never need; the whole ecosystem revolves around the novice user who understandably prefers "quick and dirty" over touching code) I have been looking for a CMS that fulfills these exact criteria for quite some time. Lektor looks ideal for projects where the developer prepares a non-trivial page structure (think book listings, music albums, anything that goes beyond bold and italic), but the client should be able to edit content. Thank you, Armin!
- gotchange 11y ago
  Did you test this generator in production? If not, the verdict is not out yet on Lektor and remains to be seen how it will fare in production environments and on the battlefields.
- ar-jan 11y ago
  GravCMS perhaps? http://getgrav.org http://getgrav.org
  - currysausage 11y ago
    Grav advertises "smart caching", so it's not static export by design, is it?
    - ar-jan 11y ago
      You're right, it's not a static site generator, but a (very fast) dynamic flat file CMS. I guess I got this mixed up because I found it while looking into static site generators.
- hanniabu 11y ago
gotchange 11y ago
That's the problem with Static Site Generators (SSG) in general. They're opinionated by nature and the learning curve could prove steep to process all the details of the configurations necessary to get the maximum mileage out of the framework but as you dig deeper and deeper, you realize that you'd be better off building your own framework that's fit to your objectives and use cases and improve and expand on that as you go along.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  I'm building my own productivity software program using Rails for this reason. I want to see only what I want to see on that page, I want nobody else's ideas getting in the way. It has an intended audience of exactly one, and will in all likelihood never acquire another user.
- jnbiche 11y ago
  I disagree. The great thing about SSGs like Jekyll and Middleman is that they're very easy to build plugins for. Jekyll in particular is easy to learn, and easy to expand. I honestly can't imagine a bona fide programmer having that much difficulty picking up Jekyll. If you did want to build a custom SSG, I think you're best bet is starting from Gulp, and building from there. At least then you can leverage the Gulp ecosystem instead of re-building everything yourself.
amai 11y ago
http://urubu.jandecaluwe.com/ http://urubu.jandecaluwe.com/

wanda 11y ago

Yep. I dare say it's how many currently-popular products came into being.

code4tee 11y ago

:-)

the_mitsuhiko 11y ago

I think that's why we have so many static site generators. However programmers typically end up just making the static site generator which is why there was nothing like Lektor before (to the best of my knowledge at least).

ngrilly 11y ago
I remember that Blogger, in the beginning, used to work as a static site generator. You edited your posts in the user interface, and you could publish the result to a static hosting via FTP.
- escap 11y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20020210134317/http://www.blogger.com/howto/newblog.pyra https://web.archive.org/web/20020210134317/http://www.blogge... it was shut down in 2010 http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/2010/01/deprecating-ftp.html http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/2010/01/deprecating-ftp.html
  - ngrilly 11y ago
    I know it was shut down. But I think it's interesting to see how the wheel turned, again.

currysausage 11y ago

Let's not forget that Lektor solves actual problems. Show me another CMS that offers: - Static HTML export with elegant dependency tracking by design (reducing attack vectors and maintenance cost on the frontend server) - Admin interface (I can't tell a non-techie to connect via SSH, fire up vi and run Jekyll) - Flexible content structure (Title/Author/Content doesn't really scale beyond a simple blog) - Elegant design and implementation (I could do anything with WordPress and half a dozen plugins, but I fail to even find a bare-bones theme without kilobytes of code that I will never need; the whole ecosystem revolves around the novice user who understandably prefers "quick and dirty" over touching code) I have been looking for a CMS that fulfills these exact criteria for quite some time. Lektor looks ideal for projects where the developer prepares a non-trivial page structure (think book listings, music albums, anything that goes beyond bold and italic), but the client should be able to edit content. Thank you, Armin!

gotchange 11y ago
Did you test this generator in production? If not, the verdict is not out yet on Lektor and remains to be seen how it will fare in production environments and on the battlefields.
ar-jan 11y ago
GravCMS perhaps? http://getgrav.org http://getgrav.org
- currysausage 11y ago
  Grav advertises "smart caching", so it's not static export by design, is it?
  - ar-jan 11y ago
    You're right, it's not a static site generator, but a (very fast) dynamic flat file CMS. I guess I got this mixed up because I found it while looking into static site generators.
hanniabu 11y ago

gotchange 11y ago

That's the problem with Static Site Generators (SSG) in general. They're opinionated by nature and the learning curve could prove steep to process all the details of the configurations necessary to get the maximum mileage out of the framework but as you dig deeper and deeper, you realize that you'd be better off building your own framework that's fit to your objectives and use cases and improve and expand on that as you go along.

vinceguidry 11y ago
I'm building my own productivity software program using Rails for this reason. I want to see only what I want to see on that page, I want nobody else's ideas getting in the way. It has an intended audience of exactly one, and will in all likelihood never acquire another user.
jnbiche 11y ago
I disagree. The great thing about SSGs like Jekyll and Middleman is that they're very easy to build plugins for. Jekyll in particular is easy to learn, and easy to expand. I honestly can't imagine a bona fide programmer having that much difficulty picking up Jekyll. If you did want to build a custom SSG, I think you're best bet is starting from Gulp, and building from there. At least then you can leverage the Gulp ecosystem instead of re-building everything yourself.

amai 11y ago

http://urubu.jandecaluwe.com/ http://urubu.jandecaluwe.com/