3 ms·

This looks pretty awesome but, speaking only for myself here, the thing I actually want is just Webflow but without the BS and predatory pricing. A visual edit

by rsp1984 2y ago

This looks pretty awesome but, speaking only for myself here, the thing I actually want is just Webflow but without the BS and predatory pricing. A visual editor that produces plain old HTML, CSS, JS and that anyone in our company can use to make changes to pages or create new ones. That's it. I don't think it exists (if so, pointers would be very welcome!), so here's my comment to incentivize someone to build it.

freedomben 2y ago
I agree. What I personally would love is a WYSIWYG front end to a static site generator that uses eex or erb. If the tool is sufficiently open source and works well with some hand tweaking of generated HTML, then eex/erb isn't strictly necessary. I'm optimistic about this though, because my suspicion is that since this tool just exports React, you could relatively easily achieve this using Next.js SSG building. As long as you aren't doing any build time or runtime dynamic data loading, by adding one more step you can use this for that, with the bonus that if complexity goes up to the point where you would want to componentize, your tool is ready for that.
- rchaud 2y ago
  Pinegrow Web Editor and Bootstrap Studio could fit the bill. No subscription, no cloud, one-time purchase. Exported HTML is fully readable and editable outside the app.
- hoakiet98 2y ago
  > because my suspicion is that since this tool just exports React, you could relatively easily achieve this using Next.js SSG building At the core, we generate pure HTML and CSS, then serialize those into React and Tailwind. It would be one less step to expose the HTML and CSS instead. I wanted a narrow scope to this so that's the focus but I imagine there's a plugin setup we can do to swap in what framework (or non-framework) you would need.
localfirst 2y ago
but this is a tough problem with constant maintenance involved and you want it solved for free and handed to you on a silver platter have you considered paying developers or supporting open source software? I doubt it.
- theultdev 2y ago
  There's really not much maintenance for maintaining simple static assets. Once you build the pipeline, it's not that hard to maintain CDN releases. GP was just voicing a wish that a certain piece of software or service as described without predatory pricing exists. They never said they wanted it for free, you did.
- rsp1984 2y ago
  I get where you're coming from. FWIW, at many points I considered just paying for Webflow but their pricing is just nuts. I'm simply not going to pay ~ $1k per year for them to host my static site with a couple 1000 visitors per month. If Webflow had a competitor with same functionality and reasonable pricing I'd gladly pay for that.
  - localfirst 2y ago
    you are missing the point: if you don't have a business case for spending $1k/year then your problem is not worth solving
    - rsp1984 2y ago
      you have no idea what you're talking about, do you?
aabbcc1241 2y ago
You can try to use auto-cms [1], it works on plain HTML and light js-enabled interactions. [1] https://github.com/beenotung/auto-cms https://github.com/beenotung/auto-cms
- rsp1984 2y ago
  I'm not super deep into web development and since it doesn't have a demo or any other visual preview unfortunately I don't understand what this does or how it could be useful. Let alone how to "install" it for "my website".
gargan 2y ago
"the thing I actually want is just Webflow but without the BS and predatory pricing" - checkout Webstudio, it's free and open source - https://webstudio.is/ https://webstudio.is/

freedomben 2y ago

I agree. What I personally would love is a WYSIWYG front end to a static site generator that uses eex or erb. If the tool is sufficiently open source and works well with some hand tweaking of generated HTML, then eex/erb isn't strictly necessary. I'm optimistic about this though, because my suspicion is that since this tool just exports React, you could relatively easily achieve this using Next.js SSG building. As long as you aren't doing any build time or runtime dynamic data loading, by adding one more step you can use this for that, with the bonus that if complexity goes up to the point where you would want to componentize, your tool is ready for that.

rchaud 2y ago
Pinegrow Web Editor and Bootstrap Studio could fit the bill. No subscription, no cloud, one-time purchase. Exported HTML is fully readable and editable outside the app.
hoakiet98 2y ago
> because my suspicion is that since this tool just exports React, you could relatively easily achieve this using Next.js SSG building At the core, we generate pure HTML and CSS, then serialize those into React and Tailwind. It would be one less step to expose the HTML and CSS instead. I wanted a narrow scope to this so that's the focus but I imagine there's a plugin setup we can do to swap in what framework (or non-framework) you would need.

localfirst 2y ago

but this is a tough problem with constant maintenance involved and you want it solved for free and handed to you on a silver platter have you considered paying developers or supporting open source software? I doubt it.

theultdev 2y ago
There's really not much maintenance for maintaining simple static assets. Once you build the pipeline, it's not that hard to maintain CDN releases. GP was just voicing a wish that a certain piece of software or service as described without predatory pricing exists. They never said they wanted it for free, you did.
rsp1984 2y ago
I get where you're coming from. FWIW, at many points I considered just paying for Webflow but their pricing is just nuts. I'm simply not going to pay ~ $1k per year for them to host my static site with a couple 1000 visitors per month. If Webflow had a competitor with same functionality and reasonable pricing I'd gladly pay for that.
- localfirst 2y ago
  you are missing the point: if you don't have a business case for spending $1k/year then your problem is not worth solving
  - rsp1984 2y ago
    you have no idea what you're talking about, do you?

aabbcc1241 2y ago

You can try to use auto-cms [1], it works on plain HTML and light js-enabled interactions. [1] https://github.com/beenotung/auto-cms https://github.com/beenotung/auto-cms

rsp1984 2y ago
I'm not super deep into web development and since it doesn't have a demo or any other visual preview unfortunately I don't understand what this does or how it could be useful. Let alone how to "install" it for "my website".

gargan 2y ago

"the thing I actually want is just Webflow but without the BS and predatory pricing" - checkout Webstudio, it's free and open source - https://webstudio.is/ https://webstudio.is/