![]() We’ve come full circle, from the static sites of the early web, to heavy, intensive, and vulnerable database-reliant content management systems, and now back to static sites in the form of static site generators. ![]() Best of all, you can focus on writing without worrying about all the technical bloat and maintenance of a CMS.Īdmittedly, I use Jekyll in very limited ways, but I like the simplicity of it (some might say it’s more complex than using a CMS, but they probably don’t know what’s going behind the scenes of their CMS!). And you can add functionality via APIs such as Mapbox or Disqus. You don’t need to know PHP or configure modules or manage a load of dependencies. That’s it! You don’t have to deal with databases, plugins, or most of the security issues that plague database-driven content management systems. Convey contents of _site directory to your web server (or let GitHub Pages build your site and host it for free).Save post as a markdown file into the _posts directory.Open up iA Writer and begin a post with appropriate front matter.Use jekyll serve to initiate Jekyll (this will also generate a local server which allows you to review changes in your browser as you make them).Open up Terminal and cd to my blog directory.Jekyll + iA Writerįor this blog, I pulled one of many Jekyll themes to get me started, editing the style sheet and some templating elements to suit my needs.Īs I mentioned in a previous post, I use iA Writer to author my blog posts (as markdown files). But there are many other static site generators Hugo and Middleman are others I have considered using. Its affiliation with GitHub, along with the immense popularity of the latter, is why Jekyll is extremely popular for static sites. Most the time, you only need to know how to navigate to your blog directory using: While Jekyll does require some skill with the command line, you really only need to know a limited set of commands to manage a simple blog or site. For example, you have control flow using for loops, which my template uses to generate the list of blog posts. Liquid and other templating languages bring many of the content management features of a CMS into generating static sites. Jekyll is mature enough now that there is thorough documentation, tutorials, and templates to get started. Sometimes called “ the blogging platform for hackers,” Jekyll uses the Liquid templating language and individual markdown files to compile a static site. Because of its lineage, it has mature integration with GitHub and GitHub Pages. Jekyll is a static site generator created by GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner. For slightly more technical editors, many static site generators manage site content via markdown files. For example, Disqus can be used to manage comments on an otherwise static-site-generated blog.įor non-technical editors, Development Seed has created an authoring environment called Prose. The article goes on to describe how external APIs can now offer functionality that used to make sites database-dependent. The tl dr of the Dave Cole article is summed up pretty well with this quote:īy developing websites as “client-side” applications that only consist of the files directly usable by a web browser with no extra work done by backend servers, we are able to pass on substantial cost savings to our clients while virtually eliminating risk of the website going “down”. for database-reliant functionality, such as user roles, workflow, and managing commentsĪ few years ago, I read a compelling blog post by Dave Cole of Development Seed.to ease publishing for non-technical web editors.Moving away from CMSĬontent management systems are used for primarily two reasons: In years past, I’ve used Wordpress to publish my personal blogs, but for this blog, I ditched the database and went with a static site generator: Jekyll. The reality is that few projects I’ve worked on merited the complexity of a full-fledged CMS (when they have, Drupal has usually been the appropriate solution on account of the functionality required). I’ve rarely had the opportunity to choose the content management system or publishing platform where I’ve worked, but rather inherited existing projects or been forced to defer to an IT team. ![]() As a web content editor and (several years ago) a freelance web developer, I’ve used each of the following content management systems and web publishing “tools” over the past 15 years: I’m fascinated by the trajectory of web publishing. ![]()
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