
Your blog probably doesn’t need a static site generator - z0a
https://zainamro.com/notes/your-blog-probably-doesnt-need-a-static-site-generator
======
scelerat
If you care about your readers, your site should probably have navigation
links, maybe even search and an RSS feed. So now you are talking about editing
lots of things by hand or moving to some kind of automation. If you like
coding HTML by hand, that's great, do it, but there's also nothing wrong with
having some infrastructure to build navigation, indices, etc. HTML is
analogous to other markup languages, such as latex or markdown, and has its
strengths and weaknesses. There is nothing inherently virtuous about it.

Not trying to be harsh but I feel like the "purist" opinion presented in the
article is an affect which can only be expressed about sites unburdened by the
presence of or desire for readers.

~~~
zainamro
I agree with you that there really is nothing virtuous about handcrafted HTML,
and it's for that same reason that I've spent very little time on it as you
can probably tell. Rather, the point of the article is to assert that you
don't need another tool, fancy theme or dependency to write and share
something online. As for the RSS feed, there is one you can find at
[https://zainamro.com/feed.xml](https://zainamro.com/feed.xml), which I've
also mentioned in the final paragraph. And regarding your point on navigation
and search, I've noticed most users naturally find their way around my website
without any explicit navigation links. That being said, I have considered
adding an "Up" link that takes you to the parent directory which I think may
suffice.

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JohnFen
Interesting! I followed pretty much the exact same trajectory on my sites. I
started a couple of decades ago with handcrafted HTML, then wrote a couple of
my own CMSes, then moved to WordPress, and now I'm back to handcrafted HTML.

Every approach has advantages and disadvantages, but for me, for most of my
sites, coming back to plain HTML has truly been a joy.

~~~
type0
You could also do plain html but using some good templating language like
handlebars or pug, and do on the fly compilation with a few scripts in your
preferred language.

~~~
JohnFen
Yes indeed -- and I've played with that before. There's nothing wrong with
doing that, but for my needs, just going with plain HTML is easiest.

If these sites needs to be more complex, then I'll likely use a static site
generator of some sort. I have two sites that are more complex still, and I
use WordPress for them.

~~~
type0
There's also Emmet shortcut extensions to write html faster, it usually is
supported for most popular editors.

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actionowl
How does one handle consistent navigation though? If you make a change it
sucks having to update that on every page IMHO.

~~~
combatentropy
I use JavaScript,
[https://www.combatentropy.com/](https://www.combatentropy.com/)

The minimalist style of both this writer and me does not sell the concept very
hard. But you could attain any look you want, however fancy, just by pasting
two lines in the head of each of your static pages: a stylesheet and a script
tag.

Then your HTML would consist mainly of the words of your article. JavaScript
could insert a header, footer, aside, whatever. To update all your past pages,
just update what that one JavaScript file is doing or your stylesheet or both.

~~~
type0
Using javascript for navigation is fine and all, but you wouldn't be able to
provide good fallback for users who disabled js. Better just use somethiing
like nunjucks to extend your html
[https://mozilla.github.io/nunjucks/](https://mozilla.github.io/nunjucks/)

~~~
combatentropy
I actually thought about that and went with JavaScript anyway. I myself surf
with it off. The loss of the header is to me not a bug but a feature. It
usually just clutters the page. Seldom do I wish to click there.

I just want to read the article and back away. If I wanted to look around the
site, then I could edit the address to go home. I think most others who know
computers well enough to turn off JavaScript would also be comfortable doing
the same.

Nunjucks is cool, but now your website is no longer static. You need to run
every page request through Node. That's not too bad, but I took the loss of
nav as the better road.

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type0
If it is a blog though, please make sure to create XML feed (RSS or Atom), I
don't consider sites that don't have it as blogs. Again even a simple
templating language can do this, you could even run pug in cli mode and
produce valid RSS feed.

~~~
void_nill
[https://zainamro.com/feed.xml](https://zainamro.com/feed.xml)

------
combatentropy
Also by the author, about the bloatedness of news sites today,
[https://zainamro.com/notes/unbearable-
news](https://zainamro.com/notes/unbearable-news)

------
jart
I like to divide tools into things that solve difficult computer science
problems and ones that are just plain cool, like Jekyll. The latter category
is like a drug since you can get lost having fun doing so much stuff without
needing to think too deeply with all the rough mental workouts. But that
usually isn't rewarding in hindsight. It's better to be attracted to the
austere. There's less distraction that way. Although, swearing off the shiny
things doesn't necessarily preclude having a more fabulous web design, OP ;)

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vhodges
Best of both worlds?
[https://soupault.neocities.org/](https://soupault.neocities.org/)

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7532yahoogmail
Bold! That some bold leadership right there!

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tyzerdak
Try hugo. You need to waste 1 day to build and config it, but then you can
make pretty amazing stuff fast

~~~
Porthos9K
I think Zain Amro mentioned Hugo as one of the tools he has used.

