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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 j

by 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.
notacoward 13y ago
Pelican (and most other static site generators AFAIK) will automatically generate lists by category/tag as well as by date. "Popular posts" would be a bit trickier, because you can't just bump a counter in a database on every hit. You can get the same info from web server logs, or via an external analytics service, or do without. Not everyone automatically considers a website to be a "product" that requires every bell and whistle. Using a Mini to haul cargo is almost as silly as using a semi for your commute. For someone writing a personal blog, who wants a minimal attack surface and minimal resource usage per hit on any access pattern (not just the easily cacheable ones), with minimal hassle, Pelican and its friends can suit quite well. I ran Wordpress for years and years. I got tired of hearing about a new zero-day total-compromise exploit forcing me to upgrade every week. I got tired of tweaking Varnish or any other caching solution all the time, and none of them ever getting proper ETag/If-None-Since behavior. If I needed a full-fledged "product" solution I might have moved up to something like Drupal or Django. Instead I moved down to Pelican. Maintaining my 14-year-old blog is just less annoying now. Wordpress is simple, but not low-maintenance. It's an important distinction. Most programmers, and I think most writers too, don't need an idiot-friendly UI so much as they need something that Just Works and Just Keeps Working.

by sytelus 13y ago

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.

notacoward 13y ago

Pelican (and most other static site generators AFAIK) will automatically generate lists by category/tag as well as by date. "Popular posts" would be a bit trickier, because you can't just bump a counter in a database on every hit. You can get the same info from web server logs, or via an external analytics service, or do without. Not everyone automatically considers a website to be a "product" that requires every bell and whistle. Using a Mini to haul cargo is almost as silly as using a semi for your commute. For someone writing a personal blog, who wants a minimal attack surface and minimal resource usage per hit on any access pattern (not just the easily cacheable ones), with minimal hassle, Pelican and its friends can suit quite well. I ran Wordpress for years and years. I got tired of hearing about a new zero-day total-compromise exploit forcing me to upgrade every week. I got tired of tweaking Varnish or any other caching solution all the time, and none of them ever getting proper ETag/If-None-Since behavior. If I needed a full-fledged "product" solution I might have moved up to something like Drupal or Django. Instead I moved down to Pelican. Maintaining my 14-year-old blog is just less annoying now. Wordpress is simple, but not low-maintenance. It's an important distinction. Most programmers, and I think most writers too, don't need an idiot-friendly UI so much as they need something that Just Works and Just Keeps Working.