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> Perhaps a missing piece of software is a WYSIWYG interface front-end that hides MD, GitHub, Jekyll and other back-end technologies from the user, but still us

> Perhaps a missing piece of software is a WYSIWYG interface front-end that hides MD, GitHub, Jekyll and other back-end technologies from the user, but still uses plain text in the back end. No, this won't work for a simple reason: MarkDown isn't expressive enough for regular users. They want to play with grids and set backgrounds: SquareSpace, Wix, and some Wordpress themes allow that with ease. They want to place a picture precisely there, which MarkDown also don't allow. And finally, users wants to have pixel-level control of their content. While it's a foolish endeavour to a seasoned WebDev, what everyone else offers blows out MarkDown and Jekyll. You basically need to either extend MarkDown, or invent a new intermediate language for these.

klez 5y ago
> You basically need to either extend MarkDown, or invent a new intermediate language for these. You mean like some sort of HyperText Markup Language?
- DoctorOW 5y ago
  This thread is about replacing WordPress with a static site generator, so far we've added a dynamic application with a GUI for site editing, WYSIWYG HTML for site content and layout adjustment. My guess is the next addition will be a form or comment input that requires making the front-end dynamic as well with solid caching as a stopgap. At some point further down the line someone will realize why each "complicated" piece is in WordPress.
  - zinekeller 5y ago
    Yes, your comment is spot-on. Most programmers will view WordPress with scorn because they see it as a bloated mess, comparable to seeing Word as a bloated mess compared to TeX, Markdown et al. But most of them don't believe - or worse actively deny - that Word's "bloatedness" is simply a consequence that some might use it as a simple document writer, some as a templated document (for use in receipt printing for example), and some will use it for things that I haven't even heard of. Actually, dmje, the grand-grandparent of the comment, has said it succinctly: HN seems often incapable of thinking about how audiences and use cases differ.
TremendousJudge 5y ago
>a WYSIWYG interface front-end that hides MD, GitHub, Jekyll and other back-end technologies from the user This exists and is called a "headless CMS". There are plenty out there, I can't speak for all of them, but I once migrated a company blog from wordpress to NetlifyCMS and it was... just ok. The visual editor was good enough (at least compared to WP), but there were a lot of more advanced things that the only way to to them was by writing some React components and referencing them in the markdown. But it allowed a writer -> editor -> publication flow, the github abstraction was well hidden enough, and in case anything went wrong it was pretty easy for a dev to get in there and fix it -- all the content lived in a repo after all.
- zinekeller 5y ago
  But again, you admitted that you're at least a team. SquareSpace and Wix (for example) is appealing precisely because most of their users are solely the one maintaining the site, at least when it comes to the editorial and design side. They precisely don't want to know the warts of manually-maintained CMS (and I knew Joomla, it's not pretty) or how to maintain HTTPS, they just want it to act as if it's Word or Photoshop.

klez 5y ago

> You basically need to either extend MarkDown, or invent a new intermediate language for these. You mean like some sort of HyperText Markup Language?

DoctorOW 5y ago
This thread is about replacing WordPress with a static site generator, so far we've added a dynamic application with a GUI for site editing, WYSIWYG HTML for site content and layout adjustment. My guess is the next addition will be a form or comment input that requires making the front-end dynamic as well with solid caching as a stopgap. At some point further down the line someone will realize why each "complicated" piece is in WordPress.
- zinekeller 5y ago
  Yes, your comment is spot-on. Most programmers will view WordPress with scorn because they see it as a bloated mess, comparable to seeing Word as a bloated mess compared to TeX, Markdown et al. But most of them don't believe - or worse actively deny - that Word's "bloatedness" is simply a consequence that some might use it as a simple document writer, some as a templated document (for use in receipt printing for example), and some will use it for things that I haven't even heard of. Actually, dmje, the grand-grandparent of the comment, has said it succinctly: HN seems often incapable of thinking about how audiences and use cases differ.

TremendousJudge 5y ago

>a WYSIWYG interface front-end that hides MD, GitHub, Jekyll and other back-end technologies from the user This exists and is called a "headless CMS". There are plenty out there, I can't speak for all of them, but I once migrated a company blog from wordpress to NetlifyCMS and it was... just ok. The visual editor was good enough (at least compared to WP), but there were a lot of more advanced things that the only way to to them was by writing some React components and referencing them in the markdown. But it allowed a writer -> editor -> publication flow, the github abstraction was well hidden enough, and in case anything went wrong it was pretty easy for a dev to get in there and fix it -- all the content lived in a repo after all.

zinekeller 5y ago
But again, you admitted that you're at least a team. SquareSpace and Wix (for example) is appealing precisely because most of their users are solely the one maintaining the site, at least when it comes to the editorial and design side. They precisely don't want to know the warts of manually-maintained CMS (and I knew Joomla, it's not pretty) or how to maintain HTTPS, they just want it to act as if it's Word or Photoshop.