

Wintersmith – a flexible static site generator - rwinn
http://wintersmith.io/

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stevekemp
I've updated my mini-review of static-site generators to include it:

<https://github.com/skx/static-site-generators>

Early testing looks good, but like so many existing tools it mishandles
symbolic links.

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toddmorey
Is Middleman (middlemanapp.com) an intentional omission? (Meaning, did it fail
one of your requirements for review?)

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stevekemp
I knew I'd heard of that name. THere are a couple of projects listed in the
README that I've not yet gotten round to.

A user submitted a bug-report to draw attention to Middleman & Yeoman, but
then closed it before I got round to looking at them.

<https://github.com/skx/static-site-generators/issues/2>

I'll try to find some time soon to add them, and work on the repository some
more.

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fakeer
You have reviewed Jekyll but not Hyde(still in _todo_ ), that is literally an
one sided story :-)

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stevekemp
My bias is towards my own tool; the rest were picked at random, based on
recommendations and my free time.

No explicit bias intended :)

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mseebach
_"Write rich web applications using the latest technologies without having to
host your own node.js servers [...] No matter what plugins you use, the output
will always be a static website you can host anywhere."_

I don't think that's a very common definition of "rich web application".

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MatthewPhillips
Why not?

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stdbrouw
Because it excludes most forms of interactivity.

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twerquie
I disagree, many applications can be defined entirely in client-side code.

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skrebbel
I know that this makes me look like a grumpy old man, but is there anyone left
who _didn't_ write a static site generator yet?

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adlpz
I did, and I'm like the worst programmer ever. So yes.

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krapp
I did too, and my site is even running on it now.

Though hacker news isn't going to see either anytime soon because both are
terrible. Still... it's a good learning experience.

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gnur
I got scared when it said node.js, then I saw it was only using node.js for
the customization part, not the hosting part and I got relieved. I really
think they should emphasize that you can use your own web-server, using
node.js to host a static site just doesn't make sense.

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risratorn
The fact that it's static should mean you can host it on any platform that
hosts static files. The technology only kicks in when you are writing
blogposts and (re)generating your static files before you sync/upload them to
your host.

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jaredhanson
It seems like just about everyone's written a static site generator. Mine is
Kerouac (<https://github.com/jaredhanson/kerouac>), another Node.js-based
generator.

I specifically wanted to apply the middleware concept to generating pages,
which turned out to be a decent fit. It ends up being a very similar API to
Express, so its instantly familiar to Node.js developers. Check it out.

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jenius
Really like this little framework, was just checking it out a week ago. To the
author or anyone else interested, I'm making a little tool that does something
very similar (<http://roots.cx>) and am aggressively adding functionality in
order to make almost anything feasible to build as a static site.

Would love to talk about this stuff any time!

~~~
rwinn
Hit me up on irc, i'm trying to get a wintersmith irc channel started.
#wintersmith on freenode. i'm jn

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sehrope
Anyone else find it funny that a language originally designed to add _dynamic_
content to the _client_ side is being used to generate _static_ content on the
_server_ side?

Makes sense to me though ... It's a natural fit for a front end dev who knows
HTML/CSS/JS and also a good way to learn proper templating.

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bernardlunn
Who wants a static site these days?

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adlpz
I do! No maintenance, no security risks, blazing speed, cheap hosting. Seems
ideal for a blog you don't update that often, for example.

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Schiphol
What flavour of markdown is this? Can I use pandoc's markdown with a little
tinkering?

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rwinn
The default markdown plug uses marked, so gfm. But there is a pandoc plugin:
<https://github.com/lhagan/wintersmith-pandoc>

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Schiphol
Thanks, this makes it vastly more useful for me :)

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tobeportable
gfm md > plain md

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mhd
I'm okay with most of the changes, but the treatment of of newlines would be
pretty much a dealbreaker for anything beyond a comment or message.

