4 ms·

why do you need a database for static text? at the very least why doesn't your site have basic caching so that multiple requests for one page don't take it dow

why do you need a database for static text? at the very least why doesn't your site have basic caching so that multiple requests for one page don't take it down? i'm not just aiming at this post (the series of articles here look good). but web pages are not new tech these days. blog sites particularly. why do we still see so many go down once they have more than zero load? especially when the article is supposed to be teaching about web dev... cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:C6RrQdORJN8J:www.vijaykiran.com/2012/01/11/web-application-development-with-clojure-part-1/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=cl http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:C6RrQdO... (first page only) [edit: there are lots of ways of caching to static files. wordpress has plugins that do it. more recently github has popularised jekyll. you can have comments through javascript and a 3rd party - i've set up a jekyll based blog with discuss comments on bitbucket and it was easy to do. it's not even hard to write your own (my own blog is nothing exciting, sure, but for years was generated as static pages from email using just a few bash scripts).]

reagan83 14y ago
I agree but how would you implement this? Aside from your caching remark, how would you design a dynamic content system like a blog? Should blog engines like Wordpress produce and maintain a series of static files to prevent db lookups for each page?
- dbaupp 14y ago
  It's not unreasonable. e.g. https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll and http://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/ http://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/
- dminor 14y ago
  I think that's how Movable Type works, or at least it used to.
maybesofast 14y ago
you can't have a content system (like a blog) without a database. (At least you can't have an easy to manage one)
- noblethrasher 14y ago
  Hacker News doesn't use a database (assuming 'database' means some separate system like an RDBMS or KV store).
  - espeed 14y ago
    Doesn't HN run on sqlite?
    - stefano 14y ago
      I think everything is saved in flat files in a directory structure.
- ConstantineXVI 14y ago
  But it doesn't have to be an online database. See Octopress[0]. [0] http://octopress.org/ http://octopress.org/
  - chc 14y ago
    He did say "easy to manage". I guess that's relative. Having the database always available has some conveniences (e.g. you can actually have comments on your pages instead of a JavaScript placeholder), and using a platform that's both really popular and quite mature has even more. A couple of comparisons should illustrate: How to write a post with WordPress: 1. Click the + button 2. Write 3. Check the tags you want 4. Click publish How to write a post with Octopress: 1. Type `rake new_post["whatever you want your title to be"]` 2. Navigate to source/posts/yyyy-mm-dd-whatever-you-want-your-title-to-be and open it 3. Type your post 4. Enter the categories in brackets at the appropriate place in the YAML front matter 5. Go back to the root of your site and type `rake generate` 6. Type `rsync -az public/ user@yourserver.com:yoursitedirectory`. This is based on the Octopress documentation -- I've only ever used naked Jekyll, but it sounds fairly similar, so I don't think I'm being too unfair here. I'm also giving Octopress a lot of leeway by e.g. including the press of "publish" as a separate step for Wordpress but not the equivalent step of saving when writing for Octopress. It only gets harder from there. Installing and tweaking a Wordpress theme or plugin is pretty easy. With Octopress, you actually have to sit down and code. I get that some hackers might be into all that, but surely you can see why somebody might find Wordpress more convenient.
vijaykiran 14y ago
Yes, I use WP-Cache, but I was in the process of experimenting with my blog moving it around the servers - didn't know that internet cared :) Using WP is just convenience, nothing more than that.

reagan83 14y ago

I agree but how would you implement this? Aside from your caching remark, how would you design a dynamic content system like a blog? Should blog engines like Wordpress produce and maintain a series of static files to prevent db lookups for each page?

dbaupp 14y ago
It's not unreasonable. e.g. https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll and http://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/ http://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/
dminor 14y ago
I think that's how Movable Type works, or at least it used to.

maybesofast 14y ago

you can't have a content system (like a blog) without a database. (At least you can't have an easy to manage one)

noblethrasher 14y ago
Hacker News doesn't use a database (assuming 'database' means some separate system like an RDBMS or KV store).
- espeed 14y ago
  Doesn't HN run on sqlite?
  - stefano 14y ago
    I think everything is saved in flat files in a directory structure.
ConstantineXVI 14y ago
But it doesn't have to be an online database. See Octopress[0]. [0] http://octopress.org/ http://octopress.org/
- chc 14y ago
  He did say "easy to manage". I guess that's relative. Having the database always available has some conveniences (e.g. you can actually have comments on your pages instead of a JavaScript placeholder), and using a platform that's both really popular and quite mature has even more. A couple of comparisons should illustrate: How to write a post with WordPress: 1. Click the + button 2. Write 3. Check the tags you want 4. Click publish How to write a post with Octopress: 1. Type `rake new_post["whatever you want your title to be"]` 2. Navigate to source/posts/yyyy-mm-dd-whatever-you-want-your-title-to-be and open it 3. Type your post 4. Enter the categories in brackets at the appropriate place in the YAML front matter 5. Go back to the root of your site and type `rake generate` 6. Type `rsync -az public/ user@yourserver.com:yoursitedirectory`. This is based on the Octopress documentation -- I've only ever used naked Jekyll, but it sounds fairly similar, so I don't think I'm being too unfair here. I'm also giving Octopress a lot of leeway by e.g. including the press of "publish" as a separate step for Wordpress but not the equivalent step of saving when writing for Octopress. It only gets harder from there. Installing and tweaking a Wordpress theme or plugin is pretty easy. With Octopress, you actually have to sit down and code. I get that some hackers might be into all that, but surely you can see why somebody might find Wordpress more convenient.

vijaykiran 14y ago

Yes, I use WP-Cache, but I was in the process of experimenting with my blog moving it around the servers - didn't know that internet cared :) Using WP is just convenience, nothing more than that.