How do you run your homepages?

[wlanboy]

For me planning a homepage does include three steps:

• plattform
  
• framework
  
• management
  

I would like to discuss what current options are available for these topics. Basically if I am still on the right path.


Back to the topic:

• Management
  
  Do I need a GUI for creating content?
  
• Dynamic or static content?
  

[*]Framework

• 
  Site creators or
  
• CMS
  

[*]Plattform

• 
  vps
  
• server
  
• webhosting
  

About 10 years ago I started with the plattform (budget) and afterwards thought about the frameworks.
Nowadays my first question is if it has to be dynamic, second one if it can be avoided to be dynamic.


Long story short: I am done with about any CMS. Content management systems brake on about anything from upgrades, themes and plugins. Don't even think you can customize anything without slapping yourself a few months later.
Yooomla, Badpress, Ghosty, Drupi or Redexe are broken by design. I stopped using them and I stopped hosting them.


My tutorials, my blog, my documentation are all written in md. Markdown helps a lot if you want to generate something out of it. No style, only content.
I started with Jekyll, moved to Octopress (due to the addons - it is more like a Jekyll++), tried Pelican and Middleman, moved to Hyde and now moved everything to Hugo.


There is still a little bit of Ruby flying aroung, because searching and paging (if you do not want to generate 1000nd of html pages) is still the last resort of dynamic content generation. But even wlanboy.com is 99% static content with two dynamic views.


After about 15 years of php, phyton and ruby frameworks I feel quite well with:

• markdown to preserve content
  
• static site generators to get css/js injected html
  
• ruby & phyton for some searching/paging
  

My next plan is to get rid of ruby & phyton on the frontend side.


100% generated webpage with some js code which is doing the searching, paging, tagging stuff through a rest-service:

 - [js] - [js rest-client] - [rest-service] - [database].

Simple html only hosting for all webpages and frontends and some javascript clue that is handling the dynamic stuff. The rest-service is hiding the database. So no SQL-injection and an easy move if I want to switch databases.


There will be something like a 100% dynamic management frontend to create content, but that does not have to be installed on the webservers. Good luck to hack a static html page on a get-only webserver without any write or execution rights.


I like to have my homepages on my dropbox. Generating new content on my laptop and it is automatically published - a small ruby script ftp-ing the html/css/js stuff.

1. write markdown file with your texteditor of choice
   
2. start static site generator of your choice
   
3. syncing generated folder (html files) to your server/hosting account
   
4. done
   

Perfect separation of content (markdown), theme (css/jss/layout) and output (generated html).

 

[HalfEatenPie]

This seems like a good format to approach the problem.  I mean if you're the only person working within the workflow then it makes sense and it works.  However, most of those other options are there for people who have to share the workflow with someone else. 


Anywho, I don't see anything wrong with this, but I do have a question in mind.  How would you expect permissions to work with Dropbox in the loop?  I don't use Dropbox on linux so I can't be sure but you could possibly have complications involved.  Why not just use something like git?  Then have it pull from git at midnight everynight or something.  

 

[wlanboy]

Why not just use something like git?  Then have it pull from git at midnight everynight or something.  

I am using git for version control only. See my tutorial: 

 

[HalfEatenPie]

I am using git for version control only. See my tutorial: 

Oh sorry mate I meant something like this: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-automatic-deployment-with-git-with-a-vps


If I recall I think Heroku and a few other places supports deploying applications via git.  Not just for version control.  

 

[wlanboy]

... supports deploying applications via git.  Not just for version control.  

I would never grand a systemuser or anything running on a vps access on my git repros...