Static website generator

[Lee]

I have been using Hugo for the past few months, well more getting acquainted with it, Go is not really my thing but it's nice.

What I really want though is something like Hugo with a front end to create/edit my posts, store my images and just do all the basic tasks for me.

Never been able to find anything that does that though, well not reliably. Anything out there you know of?

I know, expectation vs reality but static sites are coming back, I would have thought they would have developed a decent creation method by now.

 

[RLT]

God I wish they would. I like static sites but I don't have the time to code them from scratch.

 

[Lee]

I know right, I mean for something that is supposed to be so simplistic overall, they can get really complex and it can become quite time consuming to get a page/post displayed.

I mean I can get a Hugo site up and running in no time, but often I think that by the time I get something added to the site I can't justify the time spent doing it. Maybe that's just me though

 

[rocket]

I feel the same way, I'd like the speed of having a static site but don't want to spend all my time building them with content.

 

[RLT]

Sometimes the simplest changes take longer and involve more work then the original coding.

 

[Jonathan]

Never used one of these things myself. Still in the olden days of vi or nano to edit HTML

 

[MannDude]

I usually just find a free static HTML5 template that I don't hate and cut it up and call it in segments via PHP.

./index.php is the home page
./index.php?action=newpage is a different page
./index.php?action=differentpage is another different page

The content for the different pages are just txt files with some html and formatting. Then you can just upload a txt file named 'manndude.txt' and call it via ./index.php?action=manndude , for example. Each individual file can have it's own configurable settings to adjust the title of the page and what when navigating between them.

Probably not the best way to do it but it works. I'm doing something similar for a project site currently.

 

[apidevlab]

I have been using Hugo for the past few months, well more getting acquainted with it, Go is not really my thing but it's nice.

What I really want though is something like Hugo with a front end to create/edit my posts, store my images and just do all the basic tasks for me.

Never been able to find anything that does that though, well not reliably. Anything out there you know of?

I know, expectation vs reality but static sites are coming back, I would have thought they would have developed a decent creation method by now.

I have had a lot of fun playing with Grav, it's got a superb admin interface (basic and advanced) and around 200 plugins, it's made life a little easier. Well worth checking https://getgrav.org

 

[Lee]

I did look at Grav once but never got into it. Will take another look this weekend, thanks.

 

[wlanboy]

Hugo is great. Yup Go based, but I handle it as a binary package. So one single file on the PATH.

Grav looks great. PHP is not that bad as a dependency.

 

[Leyton]

I've long been a fan of Jekyll (written in Ruby) for static sites, funnily enough, just saw a post in my history here recommending it in 2014, so I've been using it for longer than I thought.

Someone wrote a nice front-end interface for it, which is built for GitHub Pages, but can be ported to your own setup:

http://prose.io

 

[Lee]

Thanks Leyton, will try that, looks like a step in the right direction. I do like Jekyll, build times can be ridiculously long once the site gets beyond a couple of hundred pages.

 

[Lee]

I have had a lot of fun playing with Grav

So, been trying Grav for a couple of hours this morning, yeah, pretty awesome, good call

The last time I tried it there was not as many features. A ton of plugins, themes and that admin panel!

Can you tell I am pleased

I think we can safely say in advance that I have lost this weekend to Grav...

 

[ChuckC]

Grav looks awesome, hopefully, have time tomorrow to play with it.

 

[Lee]

Its pretty much perfect so far, exactly what I needed, a lot of bloat if you are just looking for a basic static generator but much of it is good bloat for those that really want the software to provide configuration options for everything.

 

[raindog308]

I liked Pelican, which is python-based.

Really, there's a million...Jekyll, Pelican, Hugo are names I hear a lot but there are many others.

 

[Lee]

So few have that admin panel though.

 

[raindog308]

So few have that admin panel though.

Kirby has an admin panel. I admit I've never used Kirby, but I've admired it from afar.

 

[Lee]

Yeah, I have seen that one, it seems to bridge the gap between the most basic like Hugo and the most featured like Grav.

 

[Lee]

Tough one, it's really down to Grav (open source) or Kirby (commercial)

I guess I have lot to say about this so I will save it for a new thread once I make up my mind