
Publii – open source static CMS for everyone - BobMitro
https://github.com/GetPublii/Publii
======
paradite
I guess the submission should have been the website, which is more targeted
towards users, not contributors.

I spent a few minutes looking for a simple way to install this without all the
node/python stuff on the GitHub page, turns out it is only shown on their
website: [https://getpublii.com/download/](https://getpublii.com/download/)

~~~
rahimnathwani
I guess someone heard you!

[https://github.com/GetPublii/Publii/commit/4758af15f7032b96f...](https://github.com/GetPublii/Publii/commit/4758af15f7032b96f33d5f6dbcea55b307eef385)

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matthiaswh
I tried this out when it was first released but made a note to come back when
the source was published. So I'll be looking forward to digging into it again.
Publii solves the biggest downside of static site generators, that they're not
really friendly for most end users. I am still a little leery of how it will
handle a collaborative work environment (with a Dropbox or similar backend),
but that isn't different than any other static site generator. I also
previously made a note that the templating system was messy, so I'm curious if
that has improved!

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tga
If looking at alternatives, a close project is Lektor -- static web generator
with a web interface and easy cloud sync for non-CLI contributors.

[https://www.getlektor.com](https://www.getlektor.com)

~~~
lecarore
It looks a bit complicated for my mother to use, with cli knowledge required
even for a basic edit. What i've been looking for since a while is a software
that lets me start the project, publish it to github pages, and then generate
an executable that i send to my client. The executable would have the user
rights embeded in it, and the credentials to push to github would be in it
too. My client would just start it, be greeted by a UI, change stuffs and
click "save", that would push to github pages. For anything more complex,
they'd have to ask me, and i'd do it from my machine with full user rights.
The soft would do a git pull at startup, to have an up to date project, and
git push at save time. I'm curious of anything fitting that scenario, ideally
open source.

~~~
BobMitro
Download Windows or MacOS Installer
([https://getpublii.com/](https://getpublii.com/)) and install it on your
mother's computer. No tech knowledge is required to manage a website with
Publi.

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aw3c2
> Publii is a desktop-based CMS for _Windows and Mac_ that makes creating
> static websites fast and hassle-free, even for beginners.

;)

Love the idea of a full editor. I use Thingamablog and it is ancient and very
unwieldy. Any other recommendations for a Linux user?

~~~
jcbrand
So not really for everyone.

~~~
RobGav
The idea was to make a static generator for devs and beginners without any
tech knowledge. The Linux version will released with the first stable app
version.

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dazhbog
Publii and others like Blocsapp interest me a lot.

I know we are back to square one, dreamweaver style. But having a universal
super custom web app makes it hard for the business and marketing people to
use. And wordpress has a large attack vector..

~~~
petra
If you're willing to satisfy with a static site, static versions of
WordPress(like HardyPress) solve the security issue well.

They still create a problem with dynamic features, but you can implement
dynamic features by using third-party services, and get most of the features
needed for most small sites that way.

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mattkevan
Love it. Reminds me of building sites with iWeb and RapidWeaver back in the
early 2000s. They were a great way to get started building sites without
having to muck about with databases and whatnot.

It sees to me though I’m happy to be proven wrong, there’s a real gap in the
market for a powerful but not too technical website-building framework.

For me, Drupal 7 hit the sweet-spot between power and ease of development. I
built some advanced sites without being a coder. However with D8 they went for
the enterprise and it’s almost impossible to get the thing set up without
being a serious developer.

Wordpress is hack-prone unless you know what you’re doing and anything beyond
its basic blog features requires development or annual plugin subscriptions.

I love static site generators, but they do take a developer to set up and the
-technical user experience is still a bodge, despite the best efforts of
NetlifyCMS, Forestry, Cloudcannon etc.

CraftCMS looks nice, but features like user roles or ecommerce requires the
pricey paid version.

Is there anything I’ve missed? What would you recommend?

Nice though platforms like Squarespace are, it’d be sad if the simple-but-
powerful open source/self-hosted space was completely conceded to paid
services.

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conradk
The "Opt out of tracking" link in your privacy policy [1] goes to a 404 page
[2] at the moment.

[1] [https://getpublii.com/privacy-policy/](https://getpublii.com/privacy-
policy/)

[2] [https://getpublii.com/privacy-policy/opt-
out%20of%20tracking](https://getpublii.com/privacy-policy/opt-
out%20of%20tracking)

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9712263
This will be nice if it integrate with popular static site generator, like
hugo, jekyll and/or gatsby.js. It is useful for developer to quickly build the
site in Markdown, and give this frontend to business people to add post or
whatever custom content they want.

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vezycash
I've played Publii and it's awesome. It works offline. However, it won't start
unless I'm online (v.0.23.3).

Clicking the settings or about menu tends to get me lost for a few seconds.
Soln: A back button, Escape, Backspace, Close button maybe?

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pmlnr
\- python (>= 2.5.0 && < 3.0.0)

That's... that's a really weird build requirement.

~~~
dangoor
Doesn't seem that odd to me. It's not Python 3, but requires a not-ancient
version of Python 2.

~~~
pmlnr
Most of the times it's python 2.7+ or 3.3+.

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hunvreus
Clean, simple UI. I may steal a couple ideas for Jekyll+ [1].

1:
[https://github.com/Wiredcraft/jekyllplus](https://github.com/Wiredcraft/jekyllplus)

------
Tomte
Deleted, was [wrong stuff]

~~~
BobMitro
Tomte, you can download the installer for Windows or macOs from the app
homepage: [https://getpublii.com/](https://getpublii.com/)

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wheresvic1
It looks very interesting but how hard is it to just create your own static
site generator really? Just need to use mustache.js for templating and write a
few html pages ...

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ausjke
Been a drupal and wordpress user for years I have a problem with the static
site generator or static site itself calling themselves CMSes.

If you can not classify the content per user, i.e. certain users can only
access certain content, by login, you're not really a CMS, just call that a
static html site.

CMS was designed to be very different from static html sites, normally it has
database, login, dynamically generated content under full ACL management, as
what Drupal, Joomla do.

stop calling static website CMS please,you can not even support multi-user
login.

~~~
didgeoridoo
It’s a system. That manages your content. What would you prefer we call it?

~~~
Terretta
The term “manage” should imply more than CRUD.

See [https://www.enterpriseready.io](https://www.enterpriseready.io) and check
out some MVP content “management” options in e.g. TextPattern.

Notice the user roles:

[https://blog.arvixe.com/textpattern-admin-tab-a-
primer/](https://blog.arvixe.com/textpattern-admin-tab-a-primer/)

~~~
didgeoridoo
So we have different definitions of CMS. To me, it’s just a system that allows
CRUD ops on content by non-technical personnel. It often does other things
too, like access/role management and editorial workflow, but I personally
don’t see these as core to the definition.

Can we maybe agree to call this a “static CMS”? Just saying it’s “not a CMS”
feels like we’re taking away a useful way of talking about tools like this —
in exchange for some vague sense of semantic purity.

~~~
Terretta
Not semantic purity. Business need. Once your company is big enough to have
some people who tell other people what to do and sign off on it, you have
management, and the M in CMS is about being able to mirror that management.

I think you’re describing not a CMS, but a web UI for content authoring for a
static site generator. That product category is described by Prose.io, a web
UI for Git-backed static site generators:

 _“Prose provides a beautifully simple content authoring environment for CMS-
free websites.”_

[http://prose.io/#about](http://prose.io/#about)

Notice the phrase “CMS-free”, as in, if you just want to author and edit
content, you don’t need a content management system.

Forestry understands this distinction, the first paragraph on their “Managing
Content” docs talks about Roles. If you jump to pricing, and follow across,
you see identity and access “Management” is the feature that grows with price.

[https://forestry.io/#/](https://forestry.io/#/)

[https://forestry.io/docs/editing/](https://forestry.io/docs/editing/)

[https://forestry.io/pricing/](https://forestry.io/pricing/)

// Footnote: _My interpretation is based on having built a commercial private
label web-based CMS in late 90’s, predating Red Dot’s web based live editing
released in 2001, and following static site gen ever since._
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenText#Content_authoring](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenText#Content_authoring)

~~~
tabtab
There is no standards body who formally define and enforce terms like "CMS" or
"WCMS". It's probably not worth battling over such terms, other than in a
speculative sense.

I've spec'd out potential CMS features, and there are a lot of features that
various orgs may or may not need for their Internet sites and/or intranets. I
don't see any solid line(s) between CMS and "CRUD": it's often a fuzzy
boundary. CRUD tends to be for a specific domain need, whereas a CMS is
intended to be more general purpose: for different departments or groups in a
org. What's a show-stopper in terms of missing features for a given org
depends on the org.

Slapping CKeditor on top of a database or dynamic file/folder creation system
can get you a quick-and-dirty self-rolled CMS. You can add groupings and org
hierarchies as needed using typical relational modelling. But in the longer
run, one tends to end up reinventing wheels already found in formal CMS's, I
find.

