There are two things that get in the way of blogging: not having an inspiration on what to write, and having too many steps between wanting to write and publishing.
Static site generators are just automation to reduce the number of steps that you have to take. My current system (Pelican) reduces the steps to
make newpost NAME=sometitle
which opens a new text file in the right place with all the headers set up
yeah, it’s a lot easier for me to mess around with HTML/CSS etc. instead of writing stuff. given that I barely write things anyways I haven’t bothered looking into changing how my site is deployed in a long time.
That sounds like as many steps as for any of the Jekyll installs I’ve used, if not more. To add a new entry to a Jeykll blog, I create a new text file in my favourite text editor with the correct name and I commit and push it with git. A post-receive hook rebuilds the blog. Generally I run jekyll serve locally for previews so that I notice if I’ve messed up the markup. I presume other static site generators use a similar model.
“HTML Only”
reads first sentence
“I use HTML and CSS.”
waaaaaait a minute
There are two things that get in the way of blogging: not having an inspiration on what to write, and having too many steps between wanting to write and publishing.
Static site generators are just automation to reduce the number of steps that you have to take. My current system (Pelican) reduces the steps to
make newpost NAME=sometitlewhich opens a new text file in the right place with all the headers set upmake rsyncwhich commits it to the blogNow all the hard part is between those two steps…
I like SSGs, but the number of steps is not one of the reasons. Dynamic sites like WordPress have already got it down to
Oh, and as a recovering former feed-reader developer, I shuddered when the author described hand-editing the RSS feed. HTML is forgiving, XML isn’t.
But WordPress also has these two steps:
With static site generation #2 drops to “repeat once per year” maybe.
Totally! Which is why I dumped my WordPress installation years ago.
I’ve found just using WordPress reduced the ceremony I was going through that made me less likely to write.
Unfortunately, WordPress is a full time job, but we decided to amortize the cost of running it by sharing a single instance between friends.
yeah, it’s a lot easier for me to mess around with HTML/CSS etc. instead of writing stuff. given that I barely write things anyways I haven’t bothered looking into changing how my site is deployed in a long time.
That sounds like as many steps as for any of the Jekyll installs I’ve used, if not more. To add a new entry to a Jeykll blog, I create a new text file in my favourite text editor with the correct name and I commit and push it with git. A post-receive hook rebuilds the blog. Generally I run
jekyll servelocally for previews so that I notice if I’ve messed up the markup. I presume other static site generators use a similar model.To be clear, the ‘hard part between those steps’ is writing the post. Yes, all SSGs are approximately the same, or can be.
Hand-rolling HTML?! That’s sooo 2022. Next level is hand-rolling RSS:
https://tdarb.org/posts/shinobi-website.txt
Author here. tdarb was definitely an inspiration. https://bjhess.com/blog/2022/HTML-only-backstory/
I LOVE this and was about to do the same, myself. So many reasons. Thrilled to see someone else make the switch. I’ll write up my thoughts soon, too.
SeaMonkey. Wow :)
That is a name I have not heard in a very long time. (Insert Star Wars meme here.)