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imho static page generating sites is optimizing at the wrong level. That's what app caching, caching servers and CDNs and such are for. Static page generation

imho static page generating sites is optimizing at the wrong level. That's what app caching, caching servers and CDNs and such are for. Static page generation like this is ok at a very small level/scale but doesn't scale use wise. You cannot build interesting big dynamic sites with it. So I guess for a blog fine, but, not for me thanks

delluminatus 13y ago
I use Pelican for my personal site as well, and to me the big advantage is not performance, but security and easy of hosting. A static site has basically no attack surface, and can be hosted on free or cheap hosts like Github Pages or http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net. Of course, your concern is valid: I don't think anyone recommends using a static content generator except for sites that consist primarily of static content. Obviously if you want richly dynamic content, a static site generator is not for you. On the other hand, if your site is primarily static, why use a dynamic system that introduces additional overhead?
bsaul 13y ago
i don't think speed is the only issue. The steps for testing and toying around a theme in wordpress is always a pain : The personn starts by installing wordpress and a fancy theme on its computer, or on some random server, starts putting content, then wants to migrate all this on some "production" server. Then, most of time, they end up spending an awful lot of time with the wordpress export/import tools (which is made even worse once you starting using payed plugins). Which sometimes involves looking at random php errors. Compare that with copy / pasting a bunch of file via ftp, and then you're done. and it works for backups too...
- hsitz 13y ago
  +1. Security is a big issue too, and much minimized when you're serving static pages. It's not just "for a blog, fine", it's more like, "for a blog, optimal".
julespitt 13y ago
I really think you're using scale counterintuitively here - representing dynamism as what is scaling rather than traffic. And conflating "interesting" with "dynamic" is rather dubious to me as well.
sytelus 13y ago
Static generators are useful for quick, very low maintenance products with limited out-of-box features that are not very extensible. Most people probably want just that - they want to create content and don't give a damn to add fancy new geeky feature on their blogs or whatever. You would hit a wall sooner or later if you do try to do something more. For example, how do you generate pages that return posts per category or date range. How about automatic page of "Popular Posts"? Technically you can but it would be lot of duplication and bit of a mess.
- smacktoward 13y ago
  The problem is that while that while static page generation is definitely the best fit for what most people need, it is not the best fit for what they think they need. One of the big reasons WordPress was able to dethrone Movable Type as the #1 blog software was precisely because of its dynamic pages -- that was a big point of attraction for people over MT's static page generation approach. So much so that Movable Type's developers eventually felt the need to graft a half-baked dynamic page system onto their product, just so they could tell people who wanted dynamic pages that they shouldn't rule out MT altogether. (It didn't help in the end, but the fact that they felt they had to do it at all speaks volumes.) Why do they think they need dynamic pages? The upsides of dynamic pages (no more waiting for pages to rebuild) are right there in their face, while the downsides (your server falling over if you get more than three readers at a time) don't become evident for a while. So to non-technical folks, dynamic pages seems like a no-brainer. They don't learn the downsides until they leap up and bite them. This mismatch between what people think they want and what they actually really should want based on their needs is sadly quite common in tech products, and explains how a lot of crappy products managed to become more popular than a techie would ever have expected them to be.
- eyko 13y ago
  Client side JavasScript, all you need is a json document and a lot of heavy lifting on the client. Not a good solution for sites with a lot of content, but for the simpler ones... yeah. You won't get search, but still... For things like `popular posts`, you could probably have a task that queried your analytics data and generated a page. Once tasks are automated, it's not that much of a hassle. CMSs will still have much more to give though.
jkscm 13y ago
But many people have to deal with small amounts of data. Consider all the WordPress blogs there are on the Internet that will be set up and used by one person. Interestingly, his first reason / argument to switch was about having the content locally and being able to use markdown. I like the idea of storing the content in an version control system. I think it would be great for sites like gwern.com. But still: if you don't have much content you will get speed and security practicality for free.
TylerE 13y ago
I'd have to disagree. For instance at my old job for several years they ran a large news site (10M+ monthly) on Escenic (http://www.vizrt.com/products/vizrt_online_suite/ http://www.vizrt.com/products/vizrt_online_suite/), which is essentially a static site generator - user content pages is all pre-generated. That's a $xxx,000 enterprise product that was used by (at the time) the newspaper arm of Cox to run a few thousand websites.

delluminatus 13y ago

I use Pelican for my personal site as well, and to me the big advantage is not performance, but security and easy of hosting. A static site has basically no attack surface, and can be hosted on free or cheap hosts like Github Pages or http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net. Of course, your concern is valid: I don't think anyone recommends using a static content generator except for sites that consist primarily of static content. Obviously if you want richly dynamic content, a static site generator is not for you. On the other hand, if your site is primarily static, why use a dynamic system that introduces additional overhead?

bsaul 13y ago

i don't think speed is the only issue. The steps for testing and toying around a theme in wordpress is always a pain : The personn starts by installing wordpress and a fancy theme on its computer, or on some random server, starts putting content, then wants to migrate all this on some "production" server. Then, most of time, they end up spending an awful lot of time with the wordpress export/import tools (which is made even worse once you starting using payed plugins). Which sometimes involves looking at random php errors. Compare that with copy / pasting a bunch of file via ftp, and then you're done. and it works for backups too...

hsitz 13y ago
+1. Security is a big issue too, and much minimized when you're serving static pages. It's not just "for a blog, fine", it's more like, "for a blog, optimal".

julespitt 13y ago

I really think you're using scale counterintuitively here - representing dynamism as what is scaling rather than traffic. And conflating "interesting" with "dynamic" is rather dubious to me as well.

sytelus 13y ago

Static generators are useful for quick, very low maintenance products with limited out-of-box features that are not very extensible. Most people probably want just that - they want to create content and don't give a damn to add fancy new geeky feature on their blogs or whatever. You would hit a wall sooner or later if you do try to do something more. For example, how do you generate pages that return posts per category or date range. How about automatic page of "Popular Posts"? Technically you can but it would be lot of duplication and bit of a mess.

smacktoward 13y ago
The problem is that while that while static page generation is definitely the best fit for what most people need, it is not the best fit for what they think they need. One of the big reasons WordPress was able to dethrone Movable Type as the #1 blog software was precisely because of its dynamic pages -- that was a big point of attraction for people over MT's static page generation approach. So much so that Movable Type's developers eventually felt the need to graft a half-baked dynamic page system onto their product, just so they could tell people who wanted dynamic pages that they shouldn't rule out MT altogether. (It didn't help in the end, but the fact that they felt they had to do it at all speaks volumes.) Why do they think they need dynamic pages? The upsides of dynamic pages (no more waiting for pages to rebuild) are right there in their face, while the downsides (your server falling over if you get more than three readers at a time) don't become evident for a while. So to non-technical folks, dynamic pages seems like a no-brainer. They don't learn the downsides until they leap up and bite them. This mismatch between what people think they want and what they actually really should want based on their needs is sadly quite common in tech products, and explains how a lot of crappy products managed to become more popular than a techie would ever have expected them to be.
eyko 13y ago
Client side JavasScript, all you need is a json document and a lot of heavy lifting on the client. Not a good solution for sites with a lot of content, but for the simpler ones... yeah. You won't get search, but still... For things like `popular posts`, you could probably have a task that queried your analytics data and generated a page. Once tasks are automated, it's not that much of a hassle. CMSs will still have much more to give though.

jkscm 13y ago

But many people have to deal with small amounts of data. Consider all the WordPress blogs there are on the Internet that will be set up and used by one person. Interestingly, his first reason / argument to switch was about having the content locally and being able to use markdown. I like the idea of storing the content in an version control system. I think it would be great for sites like gwern.com. But still: if you don't have much content you will get speed and security practicality for free.

TylerE 13y ago

I'd have to disagree. For instance at my old job for several years they ran a large news site (10M+ monthly) on Escenic (http://www.vizrt.com/products/vizrt_online_suite/ http://www.vizrt.com/products/vizrt_online_suite/), which is essentially a static site generator - user content pages is all pre-generated. That's a $xxx,000 enterprise product that was used by (at the time) the newspaper arm of Cox to run a few thousand websites.