24 ms·

State of Self-Serve Website Building in 2020

153 points by nreece 6y ago

reiichiroh 6y ago
Nothing about security?
- PudgePacket 6y ago
  Most of the options are hosted or static, which are generally "secure enough" for the intended audience. As soon as you're self hosting now you're doing server admin etc and that would be outside the scope of the article.
avec_fromage 6y ago
Good article. Pity that it doesn't mention RocketCake in the list of website builders, but apart from that it gives a very good overview. Ironic that we are moving back to static websites, but I think that's actually a good thing.
- potatoketchup 6y ago
  Why should RocketCake be included in the list?
volkandkaya 6y ago
Thanks for mentioning https://versoly.com/ https://versoly.com/ One of our coolest features especially for the HN crowd is a code editor built into the browser that updates the website in real time. Something that I felt was missing from all the other website builders at the time and still is.
js4ever 6y ago
Please add Cloud CMS and Cloud Backend from https://appdrag.com https://appdrag.com to the list. It's giving more power to developers compared to other tools
bloudermilk 6y ago
As someone who's been building websites for 15 years, I can't say enough good things about this trend. I work primarily with early stage startups, often pre-product, building prototypes and V1s. The primary objective of the teams I work on is to validate product strategy, which requires moving quickly to de-risk initial development and iterate. The past few years has completely changed the way I execute this strategy. Leaning heavily on products like these that allow us to develop software with very little or sometimes no code at all. It's nuts what you can build in a few days. Discovering Rails in 2009 was the last big shift for me in this way, with tools like scaffolding to build out the skeleton of any dynamic CRUD section in a few seconds. Still, it wasn't uncommon to subsequently spend days or weeks getting specific sections of the site to reach parity with designs. Some people talk about how this trend is a threat to web developers like me. While it's true that it's never been easier for anyone to build high-quality dynamic websites, that position completely overlooks the benefits for traditional web developers. This new toolchain is like having superpowers for a very specific type of development. Pairing that with solid knowledge of web fundamentals and the ability to "grow up" beyond the limitations of the system is a recipe for delivering work faster than ever before. For most early-stage startups, fast & cheap is #1, but if you can deliver quality on top of that, you're golden.
onion2k 6y ago
I've been rebuilding a couple of sites using https://11ty.dev https://11ty.dev lately and it's by far the best static site generator I've ever used, and I've used most of them. Everything I've tried to do has worked pretty much first time in exactly the way I'd have expected.
- mbajkowski 6y ago
  Been enjoying 11ty very much as well as of lately. Most of the things have worked for me first time around as well. One thing which has tripped me up has been the flexibility of the different template engines, and in what order files get processed during build when one mixes markdown, njk, liquid etc. That section is worth reading carefully in the manual. Other than that, simple as heck with very few constraints.
quyleanh 6y ago
Great article about summarizing building a website. I have recently switch from Wordpress to Hugo with Gitlab and I never complain about speed and performance anymore. 11ty is gaining more attention and it looks like a good choice for the one considering static site.
phendrenad2 6y ago
I wish for a simplified, security-focused fork of Wordpress.
- Jiocus 6y ago
  Maybe a longshot for your case, but Ghost[1] was developed as a simplified alternative to Wordpress. Their feature list[2] bring up several security-focused design choices. The original idea of Ghost was made by John O'Nolan, then a lead dev at Wordpress Foundation. [1] https://ghost.org https://ghost.org [2] https://ghost.org/feature-index/ https://ghost.org/feature-index/
- arkitaip 6y ago
  That's literally Wordpress minus plugins powered by a theme you created yourself.
messo 6y ago
A question for people that have experience with both Hugo and 11ty: What are the main differences and which one do you like the best (and why)?
- ValentineC 6y ago
  They're battery-included in different ways. Hugo is fairly opinionated, while 11ty seems to be a bit more extendable with JavaScript.
jake_morrison 6y ago
We built a website for a film festival using a static site generator, deploying to AWS S3 + CloudFront Content Delivery Network. A few months later, the client asked about shutting it down to save money. Turns out it cost $0.05 for the month it was active, and $0.01 in the previous month.
- tehbeard 6y ago
  How much traffic did it handle for that $0.05?
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Static, with S3 below and Clouflare on top? Tons...
    - dclusin 6y ago
      CloudFront != Cloudflare
      - coldtea 6y ago
        Hmm, yes. But then again, same difference "Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network".
      - dexterdog 6y ago
        For almost everybody it is == just not ===
  - jake_morrison 6y ago
    It was a new AWS account for the client, which includes 50gb of CloudFront as part of the AWS Free Tier, so I guess it used that. I didn’t look into it a lot. As I joked with the client, it is cheaper to leave it running than pay us to turn it off.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I still miss CityDesk from Fogcreek, it was spot on for my requirements. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/12/what-does-citydesk-do/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/12/what-does-citydesk...
ovi256 6y ago
I really like forestry.io, which lets you choose the static site generator system and then host the generated static site on Github Pages or other static hosters. It's basically the missing glue for the manual operations you would normally do on your own computer if you went the Jekyll/Hugo static site generator way. But you don't need to maintain a development environment on your machine. After the initial setup, a non-developper can use forestry as easily as Wordpress.
neiman 6y ago
We (Almonit) focus on Dwebsite: websites that connect decentralized storage with decentralized name service. Works great at the moment without any server or 3rd party. http://blog.almonit.eth.link/2020-05-21/Introduction_to_Dwebsitse.html http://blog.almonit.eth.link/2020-05-21/Introduction_to_Dweb...
sgt 6y ago
Apple should bring back iWeb. It was an easy way for non-technical people to design a web page as if they were creating a document in Pages. Sometimes all you need is a simple static page for yourself or for your small business.
- benbristow 6y ago
  Microsoft FrontPage!
  - arkitaip 6y ago
    I've been thinking about creating a spiritual successor to Frontpage and Dreamweaver for years. A good ol desktop program built for easy and fast publishing and app prototyping.
    - ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
      I feel like we’re at a point where a modern frontpage would work. Make it cross platform (including maybe a simple mobile version) and have it push static sites to Github Pages (with an option for other hosts). Integrate some domain purchasing and setup with info@domain redirecting to an email address of choice. Squarespace but with an actual layout editor like Word.
      - sgt 6y ago
        Lets do this. Maybe this comment thread will spark the creation of an actual app. How do we get in touch?
      - marc_io 6y ago
        This looks like Publii to me.
- jamesvandyne 6y ago
  Agree 100%. Integrate hosting via iCloud. Blogs and personal websites are our best hope for the web in a world dominated by social media.
asicsp 6y ago
I'm currently using a Jekyll based theme to host my blog via GitHub pages. I'll most likely switch to static-site generator using zola [0]. I don't much know about web development, but fine with markdown based site generation. Was struggling with zola docs, until I found that I can simply clone themes [1] and replace the sample posts. I'll go through settings later. Best thing I like about zola is that I get a single binary (this is based on rust) and I don't have to fiddle with npm, etc. [0] https://github.com/getzola/zola https://github.com/getzola/zola [1] https://www.getzola.org/themes/ https://www.getzola.org/themes/
- melicerte 6y ago
  I was coming here just to mention Zola, which we successfully use for two static websites of ours. Zola is written in rust, has a single binary, great support for multilingual sites and a bunch of great features compared to other static website generator[1]. [1] https://github.com/getzola/zola#comparisons-with-other-static-site-generators https://github.com/getzola/zola#comparisons-with-other-stati...
- CarVac 6y ago
  As someone making my first website, I tried a few static site builders before settling on Zola. It feels pretty restrictive sometimes (probably my lack of understanding what to do) but it is simple to use and it's easy to tweak the themes.
- AnonC 6y ago
  I had a quick look at Zola sometime ago while looking for alternatives to Hugo (which is written in Go, but is also distributed as a single binary). But it seemed like Zola had fewer themes available. As a non-designer, having great themes available (for free, preferably) would be a good starting point.
  - asicsp 6y ago
    I wondered why you say _fewer_ themes for Zola, there were so many to choose from and I had a hard time to decide (and I might still change it in future). I just checked for Hugo, and it certainly has so many more compared to Zola. Something to keep in mind for future, but I am more than satisfied with Zola for now.
bitxbit 6y ago
I will be honest, I didn’t think Wordpress would last this long. However, there are some great (free) alternatives to getting a website up and running. Google Sites is one not mentioned in the article. It can handle basic needs for most people without technical skills. Speed is not the greatest however. With something like Tailwind CSS it’s very easy to create a static webpage to host on Github/Netlify.
- k__ 6y ago
  "I didn’t think Wordpress would last this long" Same here. Funny thing is, just a week ago I read that some people would say WP is "no code". I had the impression almost all of WP's success was based on countless web agencies coding customizations for it.
  - elorant 6y ago
    It's because there are countless plugins and whatnot that WP to a lot of people is a hassle free installation, similar to "no code", or at least very little code.
  - dageshi 6y ago
    Page builders have come a long way, a lot of agencies will use something like Elementor now because designers can effectively build a lot of pages in real time as opposed to doing the traditional psd->custom theme route.
- tbran 6y ago
  I like Tailwind a lot, but for anyone else reading, you still need to purge css classes to not end up with a very large css file (187kB gzipped) [1]. This requires a build step with PurgeCSS. (I haven't checked, but maybe Netlify offers a build step that will do this for you...) I also like Tachyons [2] for utility-based classes, which is pretty small (14kB gzipped). [1]: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/controlling-file-size https://tailwindcss.com/docs/controlling-file-size [2]: http://tachyons.io/ http://tachyons.io/
- arkitaip 6y ago
  Wordpress will probably outlast most of the alternatives mentioned in this thread, including every static site generator. It's too cheap, powerful, flexible and easy to use to disappear. Also, the Wordpress devs do actually make radical new changes to it to keep up with the times, like introducing the visual eidtor Gutenberg or moving towards a headless Wordpress.
brainlessdev 6y ago
There is also https://www.jimdo.com/ https://www.jimdo.com/ It offers a good experience for e-commerce and blogging.
maple3142 6y ago
I am currently using Hexo to generate my blog, then post processing (optimization) using gulp, and using CircleCI to build on push and publish to GitHub pages for me. Contents are just several Markdown files. Whole setup: https://github.com/maple3142/Blog https://github.com/maple3142/Blog
ignoramous 6y ago
> You can self-host it on a small server (one-click deployment on a $5 VM on Vultr or DigitalOcean will do) Having hosted a ghost blog before, this is the wrong way to think about it. You'd need to run a separate instance of a database which costs $15 on Lightsail with periodic backups. Running the database instance on the same $5 machine is one disaster away from a lot of pain. It is so much better to use github pages or static page generators over Netlify, since a database really seems like an overkill for simpler blogs. Someone wiser than me once said [0]: Why are you doing all this? Your entire database fits in RAM. [0] https://twitter.com/apenwarr/status/1095441483065380867 https://twitter.com/apenwarr/status/1095441483065380867
- Hitton 6y ago
  I'm not Ghost user, but quick look at their site shows that it supports SQLite. So I have hard time to believe there would be a problem.
  - ignoramous 6y ago
    SQLite doesn't save you from losing your data when the instance goes away. One requires a backup to avoid that scenario. Sure one can opt for offline manual backups, but then one might as well use a static site generator that doesn't require any of that.
    - Hitton 6y ago
      Why would you do manual backups? Just schedule cronjob to periodically upload the database somewhere. You can save it anywhere - other $5 server (not $15), to s3, even on google drive. I don't know if there is threat of database being corrupted midbackup due to writing in it, but if you don't want to risk it, just use sqlite online backup api.
- Jiocus 6y ago
  As a Ghost self-hoster, I can confirm I don't require the use of any database for "$15 on Lightsail with periodic backups". Depending on your requirement you can use any instance of MySQL/MariaDB - managed or self-managed. You could run a separate $5 MariaDB DigitalOcean droplet. Ghost Foundation provides their 1-click Ghost droplet bundled with MySQL, but you're not restricted to it. And yes, SQLite is also an option. Suggesting a "need" to run fault-tolerant database operations doesn't quite concile with running it in RAM only.
axegon_ 6y ago
On that topic, I am all in favor of static sites hosted on github. But the static site generators, the way I see it, weren't self-contained. That is, you still needed to go through a build process. And after a lot of poking around and digging about, I built(and subsequently open sourced) this[1]. Kind of a 1 hour coding-session kind of thing but for anyone out there looking for something entirely self-contained and stupid simple, there you are... [1] https://rorigami.site/ https://rorigami.site/
rapnie 6y ago
Site.js fits the use case really well. Designed for simplicity, based on small technology principles by Aral Balkan. https://sitejs.org/ https://sitejs.org/
laurieg 6y ago
Often I show people how to write simple HTML and CSS sites. They are usually just making simple single page sites but they are extremely satisfied by being able to do it themselves. What is the simplest way to get these single file HTML sites hosted? Preferrably without having to teach another tool or language?
- jasim 6y ago
  I'm working on a beginners computing course, and of all the self-host options for HTML and CSS, the easiest one is glitch.com. You can drag and drop files, edit code right there in a nice environment, and also get a subdomain that you like. Surge and Netlify on the other hand requires Terminal knowledge and requires npm installed. Glitch can all be done on the browser.
  - dakna 6y ago
    Netlify allows you to drag and drop a folder only using a browser. It works great for the output directory of static site generators or a set of hand-coded HTML files. No CLI required.
    - jasim 6y ago
      Thanks, that works. It was erroring when I had tried last time.
- volkandkaya 6y ago
  Check out https://versoly.com/ https://versoly.com/ which is listed in the article. We have a code editor built into the platform. A lot of our customers learnt basic HTML/CSS using it. And it is something I wish existed 9 years ago when I first started learning HTML at university. Design is a huge barrier when learning HTML as everything looks terrible. By using Bootstrap and a website builder you get to create great looking websites easily.
- jpab 6y ago
  Neocities.org seems ideal for this. I personally use the free tier of netlify at the moment, but I'm considering switching to neocities instead since I just have simple personal stuff to serve and I like the neocities ethos.
FrontAid 6y ago
If you are using any tool that stores its content in JSON, you can use https://frontaid.io/ https://frontaid.io/ for that. FrontAid is basically a CMS for JSON files. And based on that JSON content, you can then generate a static page or use it for whatever you want.
seriocomic 6y ago
I've recently jumped on the static bandwagon after being an early adopter and user of WordPress since CafeLog/0.71 days. What a blessing it has been. I've taken two different approaches: 1. Maintain a local WordPress instance that builds the site using all the theme/plugin magic that WordPress is famous for, but have a static-export of that into Github -> Netlify. 2. Small sites being powered by Cloudflare Workers - using pure JS. The jump to React.js / Vue / Go / Ruby et.al for an old PHP/HTML/CSS hack like me was too hard (and I tried them all!), so I settle for WordPress (the devil I know) for the build/back-end, and incorporate and embrace static on the front end. This separation is key - in my mind - for speed and security.
- kop316 6y ago
  I've seen people say WordPress is the devil, but honestly, I have found if you want a simple blog, it works extremely well. I selfhost two WordPress instances with a LAMP stack on Debian (the hardware is literally in my basement), and the maintaince I do is log in maybe once a week to make sure that Debian/WordPress auto updated. Most of the time I don't even do that because Debian/WordPress email me to tell me it's updated. I think one of WordPress' biggest issue is that I have not really found a good how to to really set it up (they advertise their "5 minute deploy", but it leaves a lot of things lacking). If I set it up, I have a series of articles I used to set it up. The other issue I've anecdotally seen is when someone installs a bunch of plug ins then gets into a dependency hell when trying to update.
  - seriocomic 6y ago
    I used "devil" in the context of the axiom "better the Devil you know..." - so while I understand and relate to much of the anti-WordPress commentary, I wouldn't call it "the Devil". Just to clarify!
    - kop316 6y ago
      Ahh, fair enough! I have just seen a lot of hate to it, and I personally think some of that is unfair to WP.
codeulike 6y ago
Odd not to mention services like Wix and Weebly and Squarespace, which is where most non-techie people wanting to self build a website would end up. Perhaps this post is aimed at the more technical end. edit: Oh right self-serve means self-host, not just self-build.
- arkitaip 6y ago
  Squarespace et. al. are not self-serve.
  - codeulike 6y ago
    Does self-serve mean self-host? I took it to mean self-build.
  - jerrygoyal 6y ago
    if you mean self-host by that, then the author has also mention webflow which is not self-host afaik
    - DoctorOW 6y ago
      IIRC it provides a download (or at least it did a few years ago when I used it) for selfhosting if you just generate static HTML.
petra 6y ago
Given those tools, and especially Webflow, is Wordpress mostly on the way out for new sites, and only be used in maintenance mode ?
cbm-vic-20 6y ago
A bit of a side-question for those using static site generators: how do you manage binary assets like images? I keep my Markdown, configuration files, etc. in git, but I don't want to put binary blobs into git. git-LFS seems to be an option, but it doesn't look like there's much support for self-hosting. For now, I'm rsyncing assets to the right place as part of the generation process, but There's Got To Be A Better Way.
- stevekemp 6y ago
  While git isn't ideal for binary assets it is also true that adding random 10Gb images is bad for readers on bad network-links. I just make sure that my images, and assets, aren't "too big" and add them to git. If they were >1Gb then I might reconsider, but the git-repository which contains my blog goes back to 1st January 2005 and is only ~50Mb in size so it hasn't been a real concern.
- efficax 6y ago
  Why not put them in git? Works just fine
  - tpxl 6y ago
    Git is not exactly well suited to having large blobs. If you change a single bit and git doesn't know how to diff it, you'll get a whole new version of the file, balooning repo size.
ourcat 6y ago
Re: 'Headless CMS' in the article: Since the introduction of the JSON REST API, I've been using Wordpress as the back-end to various personal and professional projects, built on various web and native mobile frameworks. One of the good things about Wordpress is the familiarity to it from the people who have to use it. (Authors/Editors/Contributors). (Though, I'd say Gutenburg might stir that up a bit). Also, once you learn how to write plugins, the sky's the limit really.
lksnmnn 6y ago
I've recently discovered Publii (https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/). The single big plus for me is, that it allows me (as a DEV) to provide the typical non-DEV user (aka my mother) with a simple, non markdown user interface to edit and update the page on her own.
- arkitaip 6y ago
  Publii almost gets it right. There's still the issue of getting hosting, setting that up, managing it etc for non-tech people. Your use case is great, though.
  - marc_io 6y ago
    Hosting a static website is not that difficult. The quickest way is to upload the zip file generated by Publii on the Netlify “drop” page. The domain configuration is more challenging than that.
x87678r 6y ago
As a non-front end guy I thought nextjs would be an easy way to create a good site. Do not go this route!
vicjicama 6y ago
I am working on www.pagews.com, it's a self service alternative, the static sites are based on the content of a spreadsheet/api and deployed to a CDN. The site pagews.com is generated using the service for example (including capture forms back to the sheets).
CJefferson 6y ago
Is there any static website builders which make it easy to execute code at build time? They all have a templating language, and sometimes I just wanna write a quick function to do something like read a file, chop something out and wrap it in some html -- something that would take 8 lines of Python.
- lattice_epochs 6y ago
  Probably mentioned earlier but I'd recommend Gatsby if you're just looking for a simple static site. Though, we switched over to Next recently to take advantage of SSR.
  - CJefferson 6y ago
    I'll have a look -- I've previously tried Hugo, pelican and Jekyll and while pelican and Jekyll provide extensions, they just seem so heavyweight to write.
worldmerge 6y ago
I really wanted to like Ghost but it seems out of touch. Like the only social media options by default are Twitter/Facebook, the plugin system is just zapier connections, themes are limited, and when I tried to self host because the official ghost hosting is expensive I only ran into bugs with it. After spending a week with Ghost I moved to Wordpress. I wish I could use the themes on Ghost with Wordpress because all of the ghost themes are what I want for my site. I want the nice parts of Ghost with a Wordpress backend.
- Zippogriff 6y ago
  WordPress has an official REST API. It's pretty easy to rip post/page content out of it either on a schedule (cron) or dynamically, in either case rendering finished pages from templates or similar, and serve it without involving WP directly. I'm not too familiar with static site generators but I'd expect any that can take raw HTML for post/page bodies to be trivial to automate to serve such a pipeline. https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/ https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/
  - marc_io 6y ago
    Sure, pretty easy for developers, not for the general user.
- AnonC 6y ago
  I too found the hosted Ghost platform expensive for personal use, and when I thought of self-hosting, I was discouraged from trying it by some people who know better. They said that Ghost's developers have focused on making it work on their hosting platform and that it's a bag of hurt (or soon turns into one) elsewhere. Sadly, I had to use WordPress even though I don't like the platform's security related issues and how its plugin systems can make users shoot themselves in the foot (on complexity, site speed, site stability and security exposure). What I'm looking for is a lean and nice CMS that comes with some batteries included, and can generate good static sites and also work for dynamic ones.
aczerepinski 6y ago
This isn't a solution for non-tech people, but I've really enjoyed making a blog that sort of sits in between database-backed and Jekyl/Hugo. Got the idea from Jose Valim's dashbit blog. Basically a folder of markdown files that gets parsed into memory on startup and then served dynamically from there. A Go app that doesn't need to hit a database has response times nearly as fast as static, and you can still do things like including related content ("more like this") at the bottom of a post, or pagination/filtering on the index page.
- withinboredom 6y ago
  The same can be said for vanilla WordPress with modern PHP. I generally see sub-100ms responses, even better with fpm caching built into Nginx.
SahAssar 6y ago
Considering the title of the article and that it's only talking about self-hosted(-ish) solutions it feels very weird that it only mentions one CMS. I get that it says "I'll review my top choice to keep things simple", but CMS'es are probably the most common solution to what the article talks about and the title implies that it will be comprehensive.
nefasti 6y ago
Dude, you just made me cry. Intense experience. You got something good there on the guided and the naration experience.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

153 points by nreece 6y ago

reiichiroh 6y ago

Nothing about security?

PudgePacket 6y ago
Most of the options are hosted or static, which are generally "secure enough" for the intended audience. As soon as you're self hosting now you're doing server admin etc and that would be outside the scope of the article.

avec_fromage 6y ago

Good article. Pity that it doesn't mention RocketCake in the list of website builders, but apart from that it gives a very good overview. Ironic that we are moving back to static websites, but I think that's actually a good thing.

potatoketchup 6y ago
Why should RocketCake be included in the list?

volkandkaya 6y ago

Thanks for mentioning https://versoly.com/ https://versoly.com/ One of our coolest features especially for the HN crowd is a code editor built into the browser that updates the website in real time. Something that I felt was missing from all the other website builders at the time and still is.

js4ever 6y ago

Please add Cloud CMS and Cloud Backend from https://appdrag.com https://appdrag.com to the list. It's giving more power to developers compared to other tools

bloudermilk 6y ago

As someone who's been building websites for 15 years, I can't say enough good things about this trend. I work primarily with early stage startups, often pre-product, building prototypes and V1s. The primary objective of the teams I work on is to validate product strategy, which requires moving quickly to de-risk initial development and iterate. The past few years has completely changed the way I execute this strategy. Leaning heavily on products like these that allow us to develop software with very little or sometimes no code at all. It's nuts what you can build in a few days. Discovering Rails in 2009 was the last big shift for me in this way, with tools like scaffolding to build out the skeleton of any dynamic CRUD section in a few seconds. Still, it wasn't uncommon to subsequently spend days or weeks getting specific sections of the site to reach parity with designs. Some people talk about how this trend is a threat to web developers like me. While it's true that it's never been easier for anyone to build high-quality dynamic websites, that position completely overlooks the benefits for traditional web developers. This new toolchain is like having superpowers for a very specific type of development. Pairing that with solid knowledge of web fundamentals and the ability to "grow up" beyond the limitations of the system is a recipe for delivering work faster than ever before. For most early-stage startups, fast & cheap is #1, but if you can deliver quality on top of that, you're golden.

onion2k 6y ago

I've been rebuilding a couple of sites using https://11ty.dev https://11ty.dev lately and it's by far the best static site generator I've ever used, and I've used most of them. Everything I've tried to do has worked pretty much first time in exactly the way I'd have expected.

mbajkowski 6y ago
Been enjoying 11ty very much as well as of lately. Most of the things have worked for me first time around as well. One thing which has tripped me up has been the flexibility of the different template engines, and in what order files get processed during build when one mixes markdown, njk, liquid etc. That section is worth reading carefully in the manual. Other than that, simple as heck with very few constraints.

quyleanh 6y ago

Great article about summarizing building a website. I have recently switch from Wordpress to Hugo with Gitlab and I never complain about speed and performance anymore. 11ty is gaining more attention and it looks like a good choice for the one considering static site.

phendrenad2 6y ago

I wish for a simplified, security-focused fork of Wordpress.

Jiocus 6y ago
Maybe a longshot for your case, but Ghost[1] was developed as a simplified alternative to Wordpress. Their feature list[2] bring up several security-focused design choices. The original idea of Ghost was made by John O'Nolan, then a lead dev at Wordpress Foundation. [1] https://ghost.org https://ghost.org [2] https://ghost.org/feature-index/ https://ghost.org/feature-index/
arkitaip 6y ago
That's literally Wordpress minus plugins powered by a theme you created yourself.

messo 6y ago

A question for people that have experience with both Hugo and 11ty: What are the main differences and which one do you like the best (and why)?

ValentineC 6y ago
They're battery-included in different ways. Hugo is fairly opinionated, while 11ty seems to be a bit more extendable with JavaScript.

jake_morrison 6y ago

We built a website for a film festival using a static site generator, deploying to AWS S3 + CloudFront Content Delivery Network. A few months later, the client asked about shutting it down to save money. Turns out it cost $0.05 for the month it was active, and $0.01 in the previous month.

tehbeard 6y ago
How much traffic did it handle for that $0.05?
- coldtea 6y ago
  Static, with S3 below and Clouflare on top? Tons...
  - dclusin 6y ago
    CloudFront != Cloudflare
    - coldtea 6y ago
      Hmm, yes. But then again, same difference "Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network".
    - dexterdog 6y ago
      For almost everybody it is == just not ===
- jake_morrison 6y ago
  It was a new AWS account for the client, which includes 50gb of CloudFront as part of the AWS Free Tier, so I guess it used that. I didn’t look into it a lot. As I joked with the client, it is cheaper to leave it running than pay us to turn it off.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

I still miss CityDesk from Fogcreek, it was spot on for my requirements. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/12/what-does-citydesk-do/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/12/what-does-citydesk...

ovi256 6y ago

I really like forestry.io, which lets you choose the static site generator system and then host the generated static site on Github Pages or other static hosters. It's basically the missing glue for the manual operations you would normally do on your own computer if you went the Jekyll/Hugo static site generator way. But you don't need to maintain a development environment on your machine. After the initial setup, a non-developper can use forestry as easily as Wordpress.

neiman 6y ago

We (Almonit) focus on Dwebsite: websites that connect decentralized storage with decentralized name service. Works great at the moment without any server or 3rd party. http://blog.almonit.eth.link/2020-05-21/Introduction_to_Dwebsitse.html http://blog.almonit.eth.link/2020-05-21/Introduction_to_Dweb...

sgt 6y ago

Apple should bring back iWeb. It was an easy way for non-technical people to design a web page as if they were creating a document in Pages. Sometimes all you need is a simple static page for yourself or for your small business.

benbristow 6y ago
Microsoft FrontPage!
- arkitaip 6y ago
  I've been thinking about creating a spiritual successor to Frontpage and Dreamweaver for years. A good ol desktop program built for easy and fast publishing and app prototyping.
  - ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
    I feel like we’re at a point where a modern frontpage would work. Make it cross platform (including maybe a simple mobile version) and have it push static sites to Github Pages (with an option for other hosts). Integrate some domain purchasing and setup with info@domain redirecting to an email address of choice. Squarespace but with an actual layout editor like Word.
    - sgt 6y ago
      Lets do this. Maybe this comment thread will spark the creation of an actual app. How do we get in touch?
    - marc_io 6y ago
      This looks like Publii to me.
jamesvandyne 6y ago
Agree 100%. Integrate hosting via iCloud. Blogs and personal websites are our best hope for the web in a world dominated by social media.

asicsp 6y ago

I'm currently using a Jekyll based theme to host my blog via GitHub pages. I'll most likely switch to static-site generator using zola [0]. I don't much know about web development, but fine with markdown based site generation. Was struggling with zola docs, until I found that I can simply clone themes [1] and replace the sample posts. I'll go through settings later. Best thing I like about zola is that I get a single binary (this is based on rust) and I don't have to fiddle with npm, etc. [0] https://github.com/getzola/zola https://github.com/getzola/zola [1] https://www.getzola.org/themes/ https://www.getzola.org/themes/

melicerte 6y ago
I was coming here just to mention Zola, which we successfully use for two static websites of ours. Zola is written in rust, has a single binary, great support for multilingual sites and a bunch of great features compared to other static website generator[1]. [1] https://github.com/getzola/zola#comparisons-with-other-static-site-generators https://github.com/getzola/zola#comparisons-with-other-stati...
CarVac 6y ago
As someone making my first website, I tried a few static site builders before settling on Zola. It feels pretty restrictive sometimes (probably my lack of understanding what to do) but it is simple to use and it's easy to tweak the themes.
AnonC 6y ago
I had a quick look at Zola sometime ago while looking for alternatives to Hugo (which is written in Go, but is also distributed as a single binary). But it seemed like Zola had fewer themes available. As a non-designer, having great themes available (for free, preferably) would be a good starting point.
- asicsp 6y ago
  I wondered why you say _fewer_ themes for Zola, there were so many to choose from and I had a hard time to decide (and I might still change it in future). I just checked for Hugo, and it certainly has so many more compared to Zola. Something to keep in mind for future, but I am more than satisfied with Zola for now.

bitxbit 6y ago

I will be honest, I didn’t think Wordpress would last this long. However, there are some great (free) alternatives to getting a website up and running. Google Sites is one not mentioned in the article. It can handle basic needs for most people without technical skills. Speed is not the greatest however. With something like Tailwind CSS it’s very easy to create a static webpage to host on Github/Netlify.

k__ 6y ago
"I didn’t think Wordpress would last this long" Same here. Funny thing is, just a week ago I read that some people would say WP is "no code". I had the impression almost all of WP's success was based on countless web agencies coding customizations for it.
- elorant 6y ago
  It's because there are countless plugins and whatnot that WP to a lot of people is a hassle free installation, similar to "no code", or at least very little code.
- dageshi 6y ago
  Page builders have come a long way, a lot of agencies will use something like Elementor now because designers can effectively build a lot of pages in real time as opposed to doing the traditional psd->custom theme route.
tbran 6y ago
I like Tailwind a lot, but for anyone else reading, you still need to purge css classes to not end up with a very large css file (187kB gzipped) [1]. This requires a build step with PurgeCSS. (I haven't checked, but maybe Netlify offers a build step that will do this for you...) I also like Tachyons [2] for utility-based classes, which is pretty small (14kB gzipped). [1]: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/controlling-file-size https://tailwindcss.com/docs/controlling-file-size [2]: http://tachyons.io/ http://tachyons.io/
arkitaip 6y ago
Wordpress will probably outlast most of the alternatives mentioned in this thread, including every static site generator. It's too cheap, powerful, flexible and easy to use to disappear. Also, the Wordpress devs do actually make radical new changes to it to keep up with the times, like introducing the visual eidtor Gutenberg or moving towards a headless Wordpress.

brainlessdev 6y ago

There is also https://www.jimdo.com/ https://www.jimdo.com/ It offers a good experience for e-commerce and blogging.

maple3142 6y ago

I am currently using Hexo to generate my blog, then post processing (optimization) using gulp, and using CircleCI to build on push and publish to GitHub pages for me. Contents are just several Markdown files. Whole setup: https://github.com/maple3142/Blog https://github.com/maple3142/Blog

ignoramous 6y ago

> You can self-host it on a small server (one-click deployment on a $5 VM on Vultr or DigitalOcean will do) Having hosted a ghost blog before, this is the wrong way to think about it. You'd need to run a separate instance of a database which costs $15 on Lightsail with periodic backups. Running the database instance on the same $5 machine is one disaster away from a lot of pain. It is so much better to use github pages or static page generators over Netlify, since a database really seems like an overkill for simpler blogs. Someone wiser than me once said [0]: Why are you doing all this? Your entire database fits in RAM. [0] https://twitter.com/apenwarr/status/1095441483065380867 https://twitter.com/apenwarr/status/1095441483065380867

Hitton 6y ago
I'm not Ghost user, but quick look at their site shows that it supports SQLite. So I have hard time to believe there would be a problem.
- ignoramous 6y ago
  SQLite doesn't save you from losing your data when the instance goes away. One requires a backup to avoid that scenario. Sure one can opt for offline manual backups, but then one might as well use a static site generator that doesn't require any of that.
  - Hitton 6y ago
    Why would you do manual backups? Just schedule cronjob to periodically upload the database somewhere. You can save it anywhere - other $5 server (not $15), to s3, even on google drive. I don't know if there is threat of database being corrupted midbackup due to writing in it, but if you don't want to risk it, just use sqlite online backup api.
Jiocus 6y ago
As a Ghost self-hoster, I can confirm I don't require the use of any database for "$15 on Lightsail with periodic backups". Depending on your requirement you can use any instance of MySQL/MariaDB - managed or self-managed. You could run a separate $5 MariaDB DigitalOcean droplet. Ghost Foundation provides their 1-click Ghost droplet bundled with MySQL, but you're not restricted to it. And yes, SQLite is also an option. Suggesting a "need" to run fault-tolerant database operations doesn't quite concile with running it in RAM only.

axegon_ 6y ago

On that topic, I am all in favor of static sites hosted on github. But the static site generators, the way I see it, weren't self-contained. That is, you still needed to go through a build process. And after a lot of poking around and digging about, I built(and subsequently open sourced) this[1]. Kind of a 1 hour coding-session kind of thing but for anyone out there looking for something entirely self-contained and stupid simple, there you are... [1] https://rorigami.site/ https://rorigami.site/

rapnie 6y ago

Site.js fits the use case really well. Designed for simplicity, based on small technology principles by Aral Balkan. https://sitejs.org/ https://sitejs.org/

laurieg 6y ago

Often I show people how to write simple HTML and CSS sites. They are usually just making simple single page sites but they are extremely satisfied by being able to do it themselves. What is the simplest way to get these single file HTML sites hosted? Preferrably without having to teach another tool or language?

jasim 6y ago
I'm working on a beginners computing course, and of all the self-host options for HTML and CSS, the easiest one is glitch.com. You can drag and drop files, edit code right there in a nice environment, and also get a subdomain that you like. Surge and Netlify on the other hand requires Terminal knowledge and requires npm installed. Glitch can all be done on the browser.
- dakna 6y ago
  Netlify allows you to drag and drop a folder only using a browser. It works great for the output directory of static site generators or a set of hand-coded HTML files. No CLI required.
  - jasim 6y ago
    Thanks, that works. It was erroring when I had tried last time.
volkandkaya 6y ago
Check out https://versoly.com/ https://versoly.com/ which is listed in the article. We have a code editor built into the platform. A lot of our customers learnt basic HTML/CSS using it. And it is something I wish existed 9 years ago when I first started learning HTML at university. Design is a huge barrier when learning HTML as everything looks terrible. By using Bootstrap and a website builder you get to create great looking websites easily.
jpab 6y ago
Neocities.org seems ideal for this. I personally use the free tier of netlify at the moment, but I'm considering switching to neocities instead since I just have simple personal stuff to serve and I like the neocities ethos.

FrontAid 6y ago

If you are using any tool that stores its content in JSON, you can use https://frontaid.io/ https://frontaid.io/ for that. FrontAid is basically a CMS for JSON files. And based on that JSON content, you can then generate a static page or use it for whatever you want.

seriocomic 6y ago

I've recently jumped on the static bandwagon after being an early adopter and user of WordPress since CafeLog/0.71 days. What a blessing it has been. I've taken two different approaches: 1. Maintain a local WordPress instance that builds the site using all the theme/plugin magic that WordPress is famous for, but have a static-export of that into Github -> Netlify. 2. Small sites being powered by Cloudflare Workers - using pure JS. The jump to React.js / Vue / Go / Ruby et.al for an old PHP/HTML/CSS hack like me was too hard (and I tried them all!), so I settle for WordPress (the devil I know) for the build/back-end, and incorporate and embrace static on the front end. This separation is key - in my mind - for speed and security.

kop316 6y ago
I've seen people say WordPress is the devil, but honestly, I have found if you want a simple blog, it works extremely well. I selfhost two WordPress instances with a LAMP stack on Debian (the hardware is literally in my basement), and the maintaince I do is log in maybe once a week to make sure that Debian/WordPress auto updated. Most of the time I don't even do that because Debian/WordPress email me to tell me it's updated. I think one of WordPress' biggest issue is that I have not really found a good how to to really set it up (they advertise their "5 minute deploy", but it leaves a lot of things lacking). If I set it up, I have a series of articles I used to set it up. The other issue I've anecdotally seen is when someone installs a bunch of plug ins then gets into a dependency hell when trying to update.
- seriocomic 6y ago
  I used "devil" in the context of the axiom "better the Devil you know..." - so while I understand and relate to much of the anti-WordPress commentary, I wouldn't call it "the Devil". Just to clarify!
  - kop316 6y ago
    Ahh, fair enough! I have just seen a lot of hate to it, and I personally think some of that is unfair to WP.

codeulike 6y ago

Odd not to mention services like Wix and Weebly and Squarespace, which is where most non-techie people wanting to self build a website would end up. Perhaps this post is aimed at the more technical end. edit: Oh right self-serve means self-host, not just self-build.

arkitaip 6y ago
Squarespace et. al. are not self-serve.
- codeulike 6y ago
  Does self-serve mean self-host? I took it to mean self-build.
- jerrygoyal 6y ago
  if you mean self-host by that, then the author has also mention webflow which is not self-host afaik
  - DoctorOW 6y ago
    IIRC it provides a download (or at least it did a few years ago when I used it) for selfhosting if you just generate static HTML.

petra 6y ago

Given those tools, and especially Webflow, is Wordpress mostly on the way out for new sites, and only be used in maintenance mode ?

cbm-vic-20 6y ago

A bit of a side-question for those using static site generators: how do you manage binary assets like images? I keep my Markdown, configuration files, etc. in git, but I don't want to put binary blobs into git. git-LFS seems to be an option, but it doesn't look like there's much support for self-hosting. For now, I'm rsyncing assets to the right place as part of the generation process, but There's Got To Be A Better Way.

stevekemp 6y ago
While git isn't ideal for binary assets it is also true that adding random 10Gb images is bad for readers on bad network-links. I just make sure that my images, and assets, aren't "too big" and add them to git. If they were >1Gb then I might reconsider, but the git-repository which contains my blog goes back to 1st January 2005 and is only ~50Mb in size so it hasn't been a real concern.
efficax 6y ago
Why not put them in git? Works just fine
- tpxl 6y ago
  Git is not exactly well suited to having large blobs. If you change a single bit and git doesn't know how to diff it, you'll get a whole new version of the file, balooning repo size.

ourcat 6y ago

Re: 'Headless CMS' in the article: Since the introduction of the JSON REST API, I've been using Wordpress as the back-end to various personal and professional projects, built on various web and native mobile frameworks. One of the good things about Wordpress is the familiarity to it from the people who have to use it. (Authors/Editors/Contributors). (Though, I'd say Gutenburg might stir that up a bit). Also, once you learn how to write plugins, the sky's the limit really.

lksnmnn 6y ago

I've recently discovered Publii (https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/). The single big plus for me is, that it allows me (as a DEV) to provide the typical non-DEV user (aka my mother) with a simple, non markdown user interface to edit and update the page on her own.

arkitaip 6y ago
Publii almost gets it right. There's still the issue of getting hosting, setting that up, managing it etc for non-tech people. Your use case is great, though.
- marc_io 6y ago
  Hosting a static website is not that difficult. The quickest way is to upload the zip file generated by Publii on the Netlify “drop” page. The domain configuration is more challenging than that.

x87678r 6y ago

As a non-front end guy I thought nextjs would be an easy way to create a good site. Do not go this route!

vicjicama 6y ago

I am working on www.pagews.com, it's a self service alternative, the static sites are based on the content of a spreadsheet/api and deployed to a CDN. The site pagews.com is generated using the service for example (including capture forms back to the sheets).

CJefferson 6y ago

Is there any static website builders which make it easy to execute code at build time? They all have a templating language, and sometimes I just wanna write a quick function to do something like read a file, chop something out and wrap it in some html -- something that would take 8 lines of Python.

lattice_epochs 6y ago
Probably mentioned earlier but I'd recommend Gatsby if you're just looking for a simple static site. Though, we switched over to Next recently to take advantage of SSR.
- CJefferson 6y ago
  I'll have a look -- I've previously tried Hugo, pelican and Jekyll and while pelican and Jekyll provide extensions, they just seem so heavyweight to write.

worldmerge 6y ago

I really wanted to like Ghost but it seems out of touch. Like the only social media options by default are Twitter/Facebook, the plugin system is just zapier connections, themes are limited, and when I tried to self host because the official ghost hosting is expensive I only ran into bugs with it. After spending a week with Ghost I moved to Wordpress. I wish I could use the themes on Ghost with Wordpress because all of the ghost themes are what I want for my site. I want the nice parts of Ghost with a Wordpress backend.

Zippogriff 6y ago
WordPress has an official REST API. It's pretty easy to rip post/page content out of it either on a schedule (cron) or dynamically, in either case rendering finished pages from templates or similar, and serve it without involving WP directly. I'm not too familiar with static site generators but I'd expect any that can take raw HTML for post/page bodies to be trivial to automate to serve such a pipeline. https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/ https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/
- marc_io 6y ago
  Sure, pretty easy for developers, not for the general user.
AnonC 6y ago
I too found the hosted Ghost platform expensive for personal use, and when I thought of self-hosting, I was discouraged from trying it by some people who know better. They said that Ghost's developers have focused on making it work on their hosting platform and that it's a bag of hurt (or soon turns into one) elsewhere. Sadly, I had to use WordPress even though I don't like the platform's security related issues and how its plugin systems can make users shoot themselves in the foot (on complexity, site speed, site stability and security exposure). What I'm looking for is a lean and nice CMS that comes with some batteries included, and can generate good static sites and also work for dynamic ones.

aczerepinski 6y ago

This isn't a solution for non-tech people, but I've really enjoyed making a blog that sort of sits in between database-backed and Jekyl/Hugo. Got the idea from Jose Valim's dashbit blog. Basically a folder of markdown files that gets parsed into memory on startup and then served dynamically from there. A Go app that doesn't need to hit a database has response times nearly as fast as static, and you can still do things like including related content ("more like this") at the bottom of a post, or pagination/filtering on the index page.

withinboredom 6y ago
The same can be said for vanilla WordPress with modern PHP. I generally see sub-100ms responses, even better with fpm caching built into Nginx.

SahAssar 6y ago

Considering the title of the article and that it's only talking about self-hosted(-ish) solutions it feels very weird that it only mentions one CMS. I get that it says "I'll review my top choice to keep things simple", but CMS'es are probably the most common solution to what the article talks about and the title implies that it will be comprehensive.

nefasti 6y ago

Dude, you just made me cry. Intense experience. You got something good there on the guided and the naration experience.

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