> Aether sits in the sweet spot: simple enough for content creators, flexible enough for developers, fast enough for users.
A thing that most other developers miss is that non-technical people, like (and especially) content creators, shy away from a terminal as if it were such a plague.
Some of them don't even have the mind concept of a directory tree, from a root drive to nested ones.
Therefore, if you have to `cd` to a directory and then `npm run build` it, yeah: the CMS is developer-oriented no matter what you claim. Once your Windows customer tries to run that command (assuming they know what `cmd.exe` is) they'll run into `'npm' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.`. If it's a Linux person, they may find `node` and `npm` installed, but then it's closer to a developer than the pure content creator this is trying to target.
These products seriously need to compete with the 5-minute WordPress installation. I'm no WP fan, I really don't, but I give credit to its low-friction onboarding.
> Aether stores everything as Markdown files with YAML frontmatter.
Yeah, just like GravCMS[0]. Full disclosure: I'm a Grav user.
Except that Grav has a web admin interface: now, that is more approachable to a non-technical content creator than typing commands in a terminal.
I really don't want to make my comment feel like a rant, but it's very hard to ignore that some devs entirely miss the target public they intend to approach.
I made this point 5 years ago: Today's static site generators are simply not fit for mass consumption[…] if you selected a random, college-educated writer, artist, etc. from a crowd, they are simply on average not actually in the audience for Jekyll or any other contemporary static site generator, despite how slick jekyllrb.com might look <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22991033>
(And the dirty secret is that, for a great many npm-based tools at least, nodejs/npm isn't actually required, and programmers could be writing and distributing them as a simple browser-based app.html (or whatever) instead, by targeting standardized, widely supported APIs that have been around since the days of HTML5—instead of The NPM Way of targeting NodeJS's proprietary stuff that changes/breaks all the time—but they choose not to. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41481714>)
Rings true! I’ve built a desktop app for building static sites to meet users (read „my dad“) where they are. Haven’t really touched it for a few years.
For a 5-minute WordPress installation, you still need shared hosting and a domain name. Not every non-technical person knows how to handle the basic setup — including domain registration or choosing an affordable hosting provider. After that, it only takes one minute with a one-click installer.
Next, optimising themes and hardening security add another layer of complexity, let alone learning Full-site editing.
There are many questions posted daily on r/Wordpress ("p" in lower case because they can't fix it on Reddit) — some users are able to fix the issues themselves, while others seek help. So WordPress has never been easier than using a modern static site generator (SSG).
The terminal isn't that hard — what's harder is that there’s more than one way to run it.
> The admin interface feels familiar if you've used any modern CMS, but it's built with one goal: get out of your way. Write in Markdown, see a live preview, hit publish.
The static site is optional, you can send to use the web interface if inclined.
Ah, I was giving deployment a pass since this is self hosted software. WordPress's GUI install only works if the LAMP stack is already setup properly. It's only fair to presuppose Aether has its requirements already in place as well.
> A thing that most other developers miss is that non-technical people, like (and especially) content creators, shy away from a terminal as if it were such a plague.
This project is marketing itself as a CMS which it is not.
I would even say vanilla Wordpress without plugins isn’t a CMS, even though it does come close. It’s more like a blog management system with some extra bells and whistles.
In which way does a generator manage content? The user manages content on the file system / git. A static site does not manage anything.
Wordpress is really more of a blog management system with page editing features. It doesn’t work well with different types of content, it’s geared for articles and ”pages”. How would you use it to build a site where a lot of content comes from some other background system, say NewsML feeds for example? It is possible, but you can only import the content as posts, and you only have one schema for what a post contains.
I think you should re-read the OP's original link again. Aether is not just an SSG, and its admin interface provides a CMS interface.
And I'm afraid your definition of a CMS is your own, and not the consensus. A CMS doesn't need to consume external sources, it can be self contained content.
A thing that most other developers miss is that non-technical people, like (and especially) content creators, shy away from a terminal as if it were such a plague.
Some of them don't even have the mind concept of a directory tree, from a root drive to nested ones.
Therefore, if you have to `cd` to a directory and then `npm run build` it, yeah: the CMS is developer-oriented no matter what you claim. Once your Windows customer tries to run that command (assuming they know what `cmd.exe` is) they'll run into `'npm' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.`. If it's a Linux person, they may find `node` and `npm` installed, but then it's closer to a developer than the pure content creator this is trying to target.
These products seriously need to compete with the 5-minute WordPress installation. I'm no WP fan, I really don't, but I give credit to its low-friction onboarding.
> Aether stores everything as Markdown files with YAML frontmatter.
Yeah, just like GravCMS[0]. Full disclosure: I'm a Grav user.
Except that Grav has a web admin interface: now, that is more approachable to a non-technical content creator than typing commands in a terminal.
I really don't want to make my comment feel like a rant, but it's very hard to ignore that some devs entirely miss the target public they intend to approach.
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[0]: https://getgrav.org/