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> You could mitigate this with frames This was also a feature common to software like Dreamweaver, Frontpage, GoLive, et al. Server-side includes were another

by Lammy 3y ago

> You could mitigate this with frames This was also a feature common to software like Dreamweaver, Frontpage, GoLive, et al. Server-side includes were another popular way to achieve it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Includes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Includes

gwern 3y ago
SSI is still useful today in Apache/Nginx when you're developing very large complex static sites: you can factor out the parts of your HTML template which change often, like anything to do with CSS/JS, and upload them separately. (The SSI can be seen as a very simple static site generator which happens to run in the web server.) SSI worked well enough that I doubt that header/footers were blog's killer app. As I recall, what really made blog software compelling was the commenting system for regular discussion of chronological posts. The 'flat' homepage didn't work too well with lots of small chronological squibs, and the 'guestbook' functionality didn't work well at all. When you reorganized a homepage to sort pages chronologically by date and have guestbooks on each one... you have a blog.
- p4bl0 3y ago
  In addition to comments, I would also add trackbacks [1], and RSS feeds. Trackbacks are mostly dead now, even more than RSS feeds. But back when it was a thing, I found it quite awesome and it's a feature that I always implemented in my homemade blog engines. This was the only time we had an actually decentralized social network, even if it wasn't called that at the time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback
  - gwern 3y ago
    (Yes, all useful but elicited by the success of blogs - you don't need trackbacks or RSS feeds until there's a large enough number of blogs linking each other & updating regularly that it's worth such infrastructure. So not reasons for the original success.)
qup 3y ago
This parallels my progression: I made my first site with frames. I made my next with static headers and the 8 million files to update (some programs in that day did this automatically). Then I learned about server-side includes, and did that. Nearly immediately I heard about PHP (php4!), and built this huge site with CMS, user accounts, voting, posts/comments, karma, and karma-spending--with flat files. Nearly as soon as I completed that, I heard about databases. (I was like 17 by now) Whatever new tech I got exposed to was implemented in my personal website. My "scene" at the time called them E/N sites, which meant Everything/Nothing.

by Lammy 3y ago

gwern 3y ago

SSI is still useful today in Apache/Nginx when you're developing very large complex static sites: you can factor out the parts of your HTML template which change often, like anything to do with CSS/JS, and upload them separately. (The SSI can be seen as a very simple static site generator which happens to run in the web server.) SSI worked well enough that I doubt that header/footers were blog's killer app. As I recall, what really made blog software compelling was the commenting system for regular discussion of chronological posts. The 'flat' homepage didn't work too well with lots of small chronological squibs, and the 'guestbook' functionality didn't work well at all. When you reorganized a homepage to sort pages chronologically by date and have guestbooks on each one... you have a blog.

p4bl0 3y ago
In addition to comments, I would also add trackbacks [1], and RSS feeds. Trackbacks are mostly dead now, even more than RSS feeds. But back when it was a thing, I found it quite awesome and it's a feature that I always implemented in my homemade blog engines. This was the only time we had an actually decentralized social network, even if it wasn't called that at the time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback
- gwern 3y ago
  (Yes, all useful but elicited by the success of blogs - you don't need trackbacks or RSS feeds until there's a large enough number of blogs linking each other & updating regularly that it's worth such infrastructure. So not reasons for the original success.)

qup 3y ago

This parallels my progression: I made my first site with frames. I made my next with static headers and the 8 million files to update (some programs in that day did this automatically). Then I learned about server-side includes, and did that. Nearly immediately I heard about PHP (php4!), and built this huge site with CMS, user accounts, voting, posts/comments, karma, and karma-spending--with flat files. Nearly as soon as I completed that, I heard about databases. (I was like 17 by now) Whatever new tech I got exposed to was implemented in my personal website. My "scene" at the time called them E/N sites, which meant Everything/Nothing.