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Show HN: Bearclaw – tiny static site generator with RSS

101 points by lagniappe 4y ago

hey yall, I made bearclaw because I just wanted an unopinionated static site generator with no toolchain and fancy stuff going on; it'd be my pleasure to show it to you today and answer any questions you might have. If you do end up trying out bearclaw, you can use nginx or your favorite webserver. Earlier this week I made eclaire - a static site webserver with compression, caching, and automatic HTTPS through letsencrypt. https://github.com/donuts-are-good/eclaire https://github.com/donuts-are-good/eclaire

dang 4y ago
Recent and related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34868392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34868392
whycome 4y ago
For someone completely unfamiliar with GO, how do I install this or where should I get started?
- lagniappe 4y ago
  Hey there, thanks for asking. There are precompiled versions of it so you can run it like an .exe if you want to. You can grab one of the binaries here [0] for your system, then put your markdown content in the markdown folder that bearclaw makes when you run it the first time. Bearclaw puts the html it generates in the output folder. If you want to, you can tell markdown to just keep an eye on the folder and it will generate the output as you make it, like if you have a webserver pointing at your output/ folder. From there it's up to you, you can put it on github, or use your own server with nginx or apache or caddy. [0] - https://github.com/donuts-are-good/bearclaw/releases/tag/1.1.0 https://github.com/donuts-are-good/bearclaw/releases/tag/1.1...
lagniappe 4y ago
Hello all, thanks for checking out my project! For those of you trying out Eclaire right now to host your Bearclaw site, I'm getting a weird 500 error right now that I probably introduced in the last day or two, and I'd bet you guys would too. I'll do some thinking about it tomorrow and see what I can do to smooth it out. Bookmark it and hang in there, or chime in on the issue I made to remind me to fix it, and we'll see you soon!
linsomniac 4y ago
I got really frustrated with Hugo yesterday when I couldn't add a page with just a list of all my posts on it. I spent a few hours playing around with a bunch of different options, Hexo seemed to come the closest to something I could fire up and just drop my existing markdown in (though it did blow up on a youtube embedded player I had in one post). Bearclaw does look super simple to get going, but seemed to be missing a few things I was hoping for: - No real documentation, so I copied my markdown files over. - Ran bearclaw and put the output in a web accessible location. - Went there and there was no index.html (though "home" on the "posts" page seems to link to it). - The "posts.html" page just has filenames, so it doesn't seem to pick up the frontmater. It's definitely leaning in the direction I was looking for, but maybe a little too far. :-)
- mikae1 4y ago
  https://github.com/piranha/gostatic https://github.com/piranha/gostatic & https://github.com/getzola/zola https://github.com/getzola/zola are two other single binary alternatives.
  - linsomniac 4y ago
    Thanks for the pointers, I tried them both. Gostatic is super simple, but probably too simple. It's quite a step up in power from Bearclaw, and has all the parts to be able to make a good blog, but the parts are all pretty basic and if you want anything very fancy you're going to have to custom build it. Think "main page is <ul> of page titles and date". Also didn't seem to have a way to specify a base URL so everything needed to be at "/" in the resulting site, a little tricky for testing. Zola looks like a good fit, almost as simple as gostatic, but with a lot of templates (though many kind of stale, many I couldn't get working, but I think the template largely dictates the install, so switching between themes really is a bit of work). Hexo looks like the quickest way to a fancy looking site, though it is more effort than Zola. I'd lean towards Zola.
- jxf 4y ago
  > I got really frustrated with Hugo yesterday when I couldn't add a page with just a list of all my posts on it. I know you weren't asking for solutions but I'm surprised to hear this. That should not only be trivial but is something that ships by default when you init your site. For example this should be enough on your list page: <ul> {{ range .Pages }} <li> <a href="{{ .Permalink }}">{{ .Title }}</a> </li> {{ end }} </ul>
zerop 4y ago
I have interesting RSS feeds to put it on display for my communities. Can I do it with this tool. Basically a neat display of feeds i generate.
mikae1 4y ago
Cool. Also: https://github.com/piranha/gostatic https://github.com/piranha/gostatic
app4soft 4y ago
> tiny static site generator w/ rss https://bearclaw.blog https://bearclaw.blog bearclaw.blog redirects back to source repo[0] on GitHub. Should not it be a redirect to GitHub Pages site? [0] https://github.com/donuts-are-good/bearclaw https://github.com/donuts-are-good/bearclaw
mhd 4y ago
I'm definitely going to have a look at this. I was just comparing hugo, soupalt, jekyll and zola for a tiny geocities-ish blog site, and will add that to the list. I do feel rather old when I see 3 megabytes described as tiny, though ;)
- lloydatkinson 4y ago
  You should add Astro to the list, there's no JS sent to the browser at all until you specifically add JS.
- kataklasm 4y ago
  Have a look at https://bearblog.dev https://bearblog.dev
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mpldr 4y ago
Looks cool! What are it's advantages over hugo?
- lagniappe 4y ago
  Hey thanks for looking :) hugo has a lot more moving parts, and a lot more dependencies [0]. bearclaw is written to be simple and easy to understand without instructions or learning any new paradigms about templating or frontmatter or other markup languages. [0] https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo#dependencies https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo#dependencies
  - gnoack 4y ago
    Not using a template language and avoiding to do error handling are not good ways to make a program "simple and easy to understand". If your users run into one of the many string escaping bugs or get an unexpected error code from the file system, the program will not behave as expected and not detect the error either.

101 points by lagniappe 4y ago

dang 4y ago

Recent and related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34868392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34868392

whycome 4y ago

For someone completely unfamiliar with GO, how do I install this or where should I get started?

lagniappe 4y ago
Hey there, thanks for asking. There are precompiled versions of it so you can run it like an .exe if you want to. You can grab one of the binaries here [0] for your system, then put your markdown content in the markdown folder that bearclaw makes when you run it the first time. Bearclaw puts the html it generates in the output folder. If you want to, you can tell markdown to just keep an eye on the folder and it will generate the output as you make it, like if you have a webserver pointing at your output/ folder. From there it's up to you, you can put it on github, or use your own server with nginx or apache or caddy. [0] - https://github.com/donuts-are-good/bearclaw/releases/tag/1.1.0 https://github.com/donuts-are-good/bearclaw/releases/tag/1.1...

lagniappe 4y ago

Hello all, thanks for checking out my project! For those of you trying out Eclaire right now to host your Bearclaw site, I'm getting a weird 500 error right now that I probably introduced in the last day or two, and I'd bet you guys would too. I'll do some thinking about it tomorrow and see what I can do to smooth it out. Bookmark it and hang in there, or chime in on the issue I made to remind me to fix it, and we'll see you soon!

linsomniac 4y ago

I got really frustrated with Hugo yesterday when I couldn't add a page with just a list of all my posts on it. I spent a few hours playing around with a bunch of different options, Hexo seemed to come the closest to something I could fire up and just drop my existing markdown in (though it did blow up on a youtube embedded player I had in one post). Bearclaw does look super simple to get going, but seemed to be missing a few things I was hoping for: - No real documentation, so I copied my markdown files over. - Ran bearclaw and put the output in a web accessible location. - Went there and there was no index.html (though "home" on the "posts" page seems to link to it). - The "posts.html" page just has filenames, so it doesn't seem to pick up the frontmater. It's definitely leaning in the direction I was looking for, but maybe a little too far. :-)

mikae1 4y ago
https://github.com/piranha/gostatic https://github.com/piranha/gostatic & https://github.com/getzola/zola https://github.com/getzola/zola are two other single binary alternatives.
- linsomniac 4y ago
  Thanks for the pointers, I tried them both. Gostatic is super simple, but probably too simple. It's quite a step up in power from Bearclaw, and has all the parts to be able to make a good blog, but the parts are all pretty basic and if you want anything very fancy you're going to have to custom build it. Think "main page is <ul> of page titles and date". Also didn't seem to have a way to specify a base URL so everything needed to be at "/" in the resulting site, a little tricky for testing. Zola looks like a good fit, almost as simple as gostatic, but with a lot of templates (though many kind of stale, many I couldn't get working, but I think the template largely dictates the install, so switching between themes really is a bit of work). Hexo looks like the quickest way to a fancy looking site, though it is more effort than Zola. I'd lean towards Zola.
jxf 4y ago
> I got really frustrated with Hugo yesterday when I couldn't add a page with just a list of all my posts on it. I know you weren't asking for solutions but I'm surprised to hear this. That should not only be trivial but is something that ships by default when you init your site. For example this should be enough on your list page: <ul> {{ range .Pages }} <li> <a href="{{ .Permalink }}">{{ .Title }}</a> </li> {{ end }} </ul>

zerop 4y ago

I have interesting RSS feeds to put it on display for my communities. Can I do it with this tool. Basically a neat display of feeds i generate.

mikae1 4y ago

Cool. Also: https://github.com/piranha/gostatic https://github.com/piranha/gostatic

app4soft 4y ago

> tiny static site generator w/ rss https://bearclaw.blog https://bearclaw.blog bearclaw.blog redirects back to source repo[0] on GitHub. Should not it be a redirect to GitHub Pages site? [0] https://github.com/donuts-are-good/bearclaw https://github.com/donuts-are-good/bearclaw

mhd 4y ago

I'm definitely going to have a look at this. I was just comparing hugo, soupalt, jekyll and zola for a tiny geocities-ish blog site, and will add that to the list. I do feel rather old when I see 3 megabytes described as tiny, though ;)

lloydatkinson 4y ago
You should add Astro to the list, there's no JS sent to the browser at all until you specifically add JS.
kataklasm 4y ago
Have a look at https://bearblog.dev https://bearblog.dev

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mpldr 4y ago

Looks cool! What are it's advantages over hugo?

lagniappe 4y ago
Hey thanks for looking :) hugo has a lot more moving parts, and a lot more dependencies [0]. bearclaw is written to be simple and easy to understand without instructions or learning any new paradigms about templating or frontmatter or other markup languages. [0] https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo#dependencies https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo#dependencies
- gnoack 4y ago
  Not using a template language and avoiding to do error handling are not good ways to make a program "simple and easy to understand". If your users run into one of the many string escaping bugs or get an unexpected error code from the file system, the program will not behave as expected and not detect the error either.