I would very much like to add that this is good advice for computer programmers. For a regular person, if the goal is to "just write", this is not good advice. Unless you are a computer...
I would very much like to add that this is good advice for computer programmers. For a regular person, if the goal is to "just write", this is not good advice. Unless you are a computer programmer, creating, customizing, and maintaining a statically generated website is neither trivial nor practical and will postpone the start of the writing process for so long that any creative impulse will be lost in a maze of technical steps that computer programmers, and computer programmers alone, will describe as "trivial". So if you are a computer programmer please ignore me. If you aren't, and all you want is to "start writing", perhaps try https://bearblog.dev/ or any other free blogging platform of your choice.
I love bearblog too. I think everyone should be encouraged to own their own little slice of the internet, and I've written a couple articles (linked in the post) about how to do that as simply as...
I love bearblog too. I think everyone should be encouraged to own their own little slice of the internet, and I've written a couple articles (linked in the post) about how to do that as simply as possible. I don't want to trivialize the startup effort for a non-technical person, but it's hardly insurmountable.
The title states: "Just pick a static site generator and start writing". From that, I would assume that the article suggests the use of static site generators in general rather than one particular...
The title states: "Just pick a static site generator and start writing". From that, I would assume that the article suggests the use of static site generators in general rather than one particular implementation.
Of course, I wouldn't irresponsibly answer to an article I did not read. The title is part of the article. As a whole, the article could be interpreted as: "If you are interested in starting...
Of course, I wouldn't irresponsibly answer to an article I did not read.
The title is part of the article. As a whole, the article could be interpreted as: "If you are interested in starting writing, just pick a static site generator. Additionally, Publii is a way to implement static websites that you should consider".
So it recommends static site generators to start writing as a broad category and then provides an example and suggestion on how to do that. There is no direct contradiction between title and body, but I would probably recommend adding a sentence to bridge the two claims. The article also sounds like advertising, but I guess advertising is not, in itself, either immoral or prohibited.
I believe you. I have advice for you: Don't over-extend your claims. People will respond to it, myself included. If your article is exclusively devoted to Publii (or any other technology), put...
I believe you. I have advice for you:
Don't over-extend your claims. People will respond to it, myself included.
If your article is exclusively devoted to Publii (or any other technology), put that in the title. "Publii is a great way to start writing online". It sounds more honest and straightforward this way.
I am a "regular people". Regular people can and do make static websites. I am merely saying that if you are not a programmer and your goal is to "just start writing", be weary of recommendations...
I am a "regular people". Regular people can and do make static websites. I am merely saying that if you are not a programmer and your goal is to "just start writing", be weary of recommendations that are not really adequate for you.
I'd like to give my two cents on the following point: The trend in software development for the past decade or so has been to progressively move everything to web applications (at least for...
I'd like to give my two cents on the following point:
Perhaps the biggest downside is that by design you can't create content via your browser; you need to use the desktop. Personally, I view that as a feature, not a bug. For all my talk about reducing friction for writing, I like the separation to allow me to focus when I do pull out my laptop.
The trend in software development for the past decade or so has been to progressively move everything to web applications (at least for user-facing software). First we got web apps for everything, then existing desktop applications started vanishing in favor of web interfaces, then the tech stack used for web development started sneaking into the desktop until we got to the current situation where almost every task the average user does on their computer is either done through a web browser... or still a web browser, but wearing a coat of paint to pretend it's a desktop application, something that has been frustrating me ever since.
While I begrudgingly accept that this trend isn't strictly a downgrade if approached sensibly (and it's not like badly designed software didn't exist before the Javascript Nation attacked), I do find it very amusing that you're suggesting a workflow for a task (publishing an article to a blog) that traditionally was uncontroversially within the purview of a web browser that, for once, replaces the web browser with a desktop application. And while Publii's project repository does reveal that the desktop application is one of those "browser pretending to be a dedicated desktop program" applications, I think I can cut them some slack and acknowledge this is in fact one of the cases where doing this is sensible.
Bit of a tangent but there is some irony in that you are basically running a CMS locally in a browser in order to publish its HTML to a webserver. It is like coming full circle with SSG was meant...
Bit of a tangent but there is some irony in that you are basically running a CMS locally in a browser in order to publish its HTML to a webserver. It is like coming full circle with SSG was meant as an alternative to CMS platforms. Then it would just as apt to say "Pick a CMS and start writing".
I know I sound a 1000 years old and I do acknowledge that modern tools makes for a wider user base, but the last decades have also added a pretty big tech stack to make simple websites. 25 years ago Notepad and a FTP client was all that was needed.
It won't be long until the recommended stack for a blog includes a Kubernetes cluster...
Frankly I don't mind the webification of desktop. Desktop UI has been notoriously painful for years. Web isn't great but it is extensively understood and studied with comprehensive support....
Frankly I don't mind the webification of desktop. Desktop UI has been notoriously painful for years. Web isn't great but it is extensively understood and studied with comprehensive support. Desktop UI wouldn't have been consumed if it had been easy to use but it really never has been.
My main gripe with it is that modern web browsers are horrifyingly complex. As more features kept being bolted on what was originally a glorified document viewer over a network, they effectively...
My main gripe with it is that modern web browsers are horrifyingly complex. As more features kept being bolted on what was originally a glorified document viewer over a network, they effectively became a second OS running on top of your actual OS. Meaning they also consume a ton of resources, orders of magnitude beyond what a more carefully designed native desktop application for a given specific purpose would. On my i9 powered laptop with 16GB of RAM and a competent GPU, this is fine, and I have to admit that lowering the skill floor of UI design down to "Can you write an HTML page and some CSS?" is something I'd consider a good thing with regard to democratizing programming for the general public. But this also means a perfectly serviceable email/office suite machine from, say, 2013 is now hopelessly slow the second a web browser is needed, despite the tasks you'd accomplish with that machine back in 2013 not being any more complicated than what the layman would use their computer for in 2025.
Combine that with "native" desktop applications having become separate instances each of a web browser hiding under a trenchcoat, and you get a bunch of what should still be perfectly serviceable hardware becoming borderline e-waste for no reason. That is the part I don't like about everything becoming a pseudo-web app. Compare Discord's official client to this third party client here.
I happen to own an old 2013 laptop beside my main one with a venerable dual core AMD processor of some description (and laptop-grade, at that) and a grand total of 6GB of RAM. As you can probably guess, even thinking of running the official client would make that laptop detonate. That third party client that is optimized enough to run on Windows 2000 with period accurate hardware, though? It works just fine, as any instant messaging application should. That was a solved problem back in the days of IRC, before the advent of GUIs.
This needless buildup of spec requirements for software that still accomplishes the same purpose is to me a harmful regression of our software ecosystem. Obviously I'm not advocating to go back to the pre-GUI days and dropping Discord for irssi (and yes, I'm aware Discord isn't just for text messages), that would be silly. However, we do have the knowledge necessary to keep our modern software working on older hardware and I dislike that not nearly enough effort is being put toward this when over-consumption of our very much limited resources to continue producing said hardware is a significant concern.
I do understand the value in simplifying UI development that the webdev tech stack brings and why people would consider it to be worth it despite the above, but I also think way too many people are carelessly disregarding traditional UI development methods in favor of the all-consuming Electron and co. without considering the implications of the performance tradeoff that brings.
And while I took them as my example, this isn't just about old computers. Garbage-spec overly cheap machines do still come out of factories brand new to this day (even if that part has been getting vastly better compared to the bad old days of the 2010s). These are usually bought by people who simply can't afford any better, so this trend of ignoring the resource bloat induced by putting an entire web browser into the tech stack for each application is doing them a disservice too.
Also Javascript scares me and it's gotten everywhere, please send help
You may be delighted to hear that there are people actively working on solutions/alternatives to this issue. Take for example Tauri – it’s basically Electron, in that it uses the “web stack” for...
Combine that with "native" desktop applications having become separate instances each of a web browser hiding under a trenchcoat, and you get a bunch of what should still be perfectly serviceable hardware becoming borderline e-waste for no reason. That is the part I don't like about everything becoming a pseudo-web app. Compare Discord's official client to this third party client here.
I do understand the value in simplifying UI development that the webdev tech stack brings and why people would consider it to be worth it despite the above, but I also think way too many people are carelessly disregarding traditional UI development methods in favor of the all-consuming Electron and co. without considering the implications of the performance tradeoff that brings.
You may be delighted to hear that there are people actively working on solutions/alternatives to this issue. Take for example Tauri – it’s basically Electron, in that it uses the “web stack” for cross-platform desktop apps, but without the need to run a Chromium instance underneath. Genuinely hopeful stuff like this will take off in the years to come!
In general though, I still very much agree that
This needless buildup of spec requirements for software that still accomplishes the same purpose is to me a harmful regression of our software ecosystem.
– we used to accomplish similar tasks with much, much less resources. Can developer time really be worth this much of a tradeoff?
I think it works a lot better when the application in question was fundamentally designed that way, like Publii, vs being refactored/migrated from desktop-to-browser-to-desktop/browser. There's...
I think it works a lot better when the application in question was fundamentally designed that way, like Publii, vs being refactored/migrated from desktop-to-browser-to-desktop/browser. There's always going to be some feature that gets cut or isn't feasible, but if the app was designed specifically for it, it's not so bad. But I agree with your overall point that it's OK for a desktop app to just be a desktop app.
Definitely more automatic than my vim+jekyll+rsync over SSH setup. But I like being hands on with the process. I didn't know tools like Publii existed. Seems neat. However, seems like there is a...
Definitely more automatic than my vim+jekyll+rsync over SSH setup. But I like being hands on with the process.
I didn't know tools like Publii existed. Seems neat. However, seems like there is a "rest of the owl"-thing with getting the whole sync process fully configured.
Yeah I covered that part in an earlier article. Once things are set up it's pretty easy. There's a place for engineering it your own way though. It's a great way to learn new tools, get more...
Yeah I covered that part in an earlier article. Once things are set up it's pretty easy.
There's a place for engineering it your own way though. It's a great way to learn new tools, get more familiar with stuff you're interested in, and it can be great to document how you do things so others in the future can learn from it
@mattsayar, since all you seem to have posted to Tildes is your own content, I think it's worth pointing out Tildes self-promotion rules. I'm not trying to totally discourage you from posting your...
@mattsayar, since all you seem to have posted to Tildes is your own content, I think it's worth pointing out Tildes self-promotion rules. I'm not trying to totally discourage you from posting your work here on Tildes, but I wanted to point out the rules just in case you weren't aware of them, and so you don't inadvertently get banned for spamming:
Self-promotion
If you have your own site/project/channel/etc. that you'd like to share on Tildes, that's generally fine (in moderation), but it shouldn't be the primary reason that you post on the site. Tildes is a community, not a free advertising platform. Sharing your own content is welcome as long as you're involved in the community, but don't just treat Tildes as a source of an audience.
Thanks, I'm aware of the rules and I want to point out that I am active in other parts of this community. Additionally, I have another account that I'm also active with that I don't necessarily...
Thanks, I'm aware of the rules and I want to point out that I am active in other parts of this community. Additionally, I have another account that I'm also active with that I don't necessarily want associated with my real name.
Fair enough. I just genuinely don't want to see people get inadvertently banned for unknowingly breaking the self-promotion rule, which is why I mention it whenever I notice a new account that...
Fair enough. I just genuinely don't want to see people get inadvertently banned for unknowingly breaking the self-promotion rule, which is why I mention it whenever I notice a new account that only seems to post their own content.
I don't actually enforce the rules though, so if you do have another account that you're more active on it might be worth letting @Deimos know that so he doesn't ban this one by assuming you're just spamming here.
I would very much like to add that this is good advice for computer programmers. For a regular person, if the goal is to "just write", this is not good advice. Unless you are a computer programmer, creating, customizing, and maintaining a statically generated website is neither trivial nor practical and will postpone the start of the writing process for so long that any creative impulse will be lost in a maze of technical steps that computer programmers, and computer programmers alone, will describe as "trivial". So if you are a computer programmer please ignore me. If you aren't, and all you want is to "start writing", perhaps try https://bearblog.dev/ or any other free blogging platform of your choice.
I love bearblog too. I think everyone should be encouraged to own their own little slice of the internet, and I've written a couple articles (linked in the post) about how to do that as simply as possible. I don't want to trivialize the startup effort for a non-technical person, but it's hardly insurmountable.
The title states: "Just pick a static site generator and start writing". From that, I would assume that the article suggests the use of static site generators in general rather than one particular implementation.
Of course not. Why would you assume that?
Of course, I wouldn't irresponsibly answer to an article I did not read.
The title is part of the article. As a whole, the article could be interpreted as: "If you are interested in starting writing, just pick a static site generator. Additionally, Publii is a way to implement static websites that you should consider".
So it recommends static site generators to start writing as a broad category and then provides an example and suggestion on how to do that. There is no direct contradiction between title and body, but I would probably recommend adding a sentence to bridge the two claims. The article also sounds like advertising, but I guess advertising is not, in itself, either immoral or prohibited.
Not advertising, just sharing my experience because someone here asked. I just happen to also like it
I believe you. I have advice for you:
I am a "regular people". Regular people can and do make static websites. I am merely saying that if you are not a programmer and your goal is to "just start writing", be weary of recommendations that are not really adequate for you.
I'd like to give my two cents on the following point:
The trend in software development for the past decade or so has been to progressively move everything to web applications (at least for user-facing software). First we got web apps for everything, then existing desktop applications started vanishing in favor of web interfaces, then the tech stack used for web development started sneaking into the desktop until we got to the current situation where almost every task the average user does on their computer is either done through a web browser... or still a web browser, but wearing a coat of paint to pretend it's a desktop application, something that has been frustrating me ever since.
While I begrudgingly accept that this trend isn't strictly a downgrade if approached sensibly (and it's not like badly designed software didn't exist before the Javascript Nation attacked), I do find it very amusing that you're suggesting a workflow for a task (publishing an article to a blog) that traditionally was uncontroversially within the purview of a web browser that, for once, replaces the web browser with a desktop application. And while Publii's project repository does reveal that the desktop application is one of those "browser pretending to be a dedicated desktop program" applications, I think I can cut them some slack and acknowledge this is in fact one of the cases where doing this is sensible.
Bit of a tangent but there is some irony in that you are basically running a CMS locally in a browser in order to publish its HTML to a webserver. It is like coming full circle with SSG was meant as an alternative to CMS platforms. Then it would just as apt to say "Pick a CMS and start writing".
I know I sound a 1000 years old and I do acknowledge that modern tools makes for a wider user base, but the last decades have also added a pretty big tech stack to make simple websites. 25 years ago Notepad and a FTP client was all that was needed.
It won't be long until the recommended stack for a blog includes a Kubernetes cluster...
Frankly I don't mind the webification of desktop. Desktop UI has been notoriously painful for years. Web isn't great but it is extensively understood and studied with comprehensive support. Desktop UI wouldn't have been consumed if it had been easy to use but it really never has been.
My main gripe with it is that modern web browsers are horrifyingly complex. As more features kept being bolted on what was originally a glorified document viewer over a network, they effectively became a second OS running on top of your actual OS. Meaning they also consume a ton of resources, orders of magnitude beyond what a more carefully designed native desktop application for a given specific purpose would. On my i9 powered laptop with 16GB of RAM and a competent GPU, this is fine, and I have to admit that lowering the skill floor of UI design down to "Can you write an HTML page and some CSS?" is something I'd consider a good thing with regard to democratizing programming for the general public. But this also means a perfectly serviceable email/office suite machine from, say, 2013 is now hopelessly slow the second a web browser is needed, despite the tasks you'd accomplish with that machine back in 2013 not being any more complicated than what the layman would use their computer for in 2025.
Combine that with "native" desktop applications having become separate instances each of a web browser hiding under a trenchcoat, and you get a bunch of what should still be perfectly serviceable hardware becoming borderline e-waste for no reason. That is the part I don't like about everything becoming a pseudo-web app. Compare Discord's official client to this third party client here.
I happen to own an old 2013 laptop beside my main one with a venerable dual core AMD processor of some description (and laptop-grade, at that) and a grand total of 6GB of RAM. As you can probably guess, even thinking of running the official client would make that laptop detonate. That third party client that is optimized enough to run on Windows 2000 with period accurate hardware, though? It works just fine, as any instant messaging application should. That was a solved problem back in the days of IRC, before the advent of GUIs.
This needless buildup of spec requirements for software that still accomplishes the same purpose is to me a harmful regression of our software ecosystem. Obviously I'm not advocating to go back to the pre-GUI days and dropping Discord for
irssi(and yes, I'm aware Discord isn't just for text messages), that would be silly. However, we do have the knowledge necessary to keep our modern software working on older hardware and I dislike that not nearly enough effort is being put toward this when over-consumption of our very much limited resources to continue producing said hardware is a significant concern.I do understand the value in simplifying UI development that the webdev tech stack brings and why people would consider it to be worth it despite the above, but I also think way too many people are carelessly disregarding traditional UI development methods in favor of the all-consuming Electron and co. without considering the implications of the performance tradeoff that brings.
And while I took them as my example, this isn't just about old computers. Garbage-spec overly cheap machines do still come out of factories brand new to this day (even if that part has been getting vastly better compared to the bad old days of the 2010s). These are usually bought by people who simply can't afford any better, so this trend of ignoring the resource bloat induced by putting an entire web browser into the tech stack for each application is doing them a disservice too.
Also Javascript scares me and it's gotten everywhere, please send helpYou may be delighted to hear that there are people actively working on solutions/alternatives to this issue. Take for example Tauri – it’s basically Electron, in that it uses the “web stack” for cross-platform desktop apps, but without the need to run a Chromium instance underneath. Genuinely hopeful stuff like this will take off in the years to come!
In general though, I still very much agree that
– we used to accomplish similar tasks with much, much less resources. Can developer time really be worth this much of a tradeoff?
I think it works a lot better when the application in question was fundamentally designed that way, like Publii, vs being refactored/migrated from desktop-to-browser-to-desktop/browser. There's always going to be some feature that gets cut or isn't feasible, but if the app was designed specifically for it, it's not so bad. But I agree with your overall point that it's OK for a desktop app to just be a desktop app.
@creesch mentioned wanting to see what using a tool like Publii to run a website is like, so I thought I'd share it here
Definitely more automatic than my vim+jekyll+rsync over SSH setup. But I like being hands on with the process.
I didn't know tools like Publii existed. Seems neat. However, seems like there is a "rest of the owl"-thing with getting the whole sync process fully configured.
Yeah I covered that part in an earlier article. Once things are set up it's pretty easy.
There's a place for engineering it your own way though. It's a great way to learn new tools, get more familiar with stuff you're interested in, and it can be great to document how you do things so others in the future can learn from it
@mattsayar, since all you seem to have posted to Tildes is your own content, I think it's worth pointing out Tildes self-promotion rules. I'm not trying to totally discourage you from posting your work here on Tildes, but I wanted to point out the rules just in case you weren't aware of them, and so you don't inadvertently get banned for spamming:
https://docs.tildes.net/policies/code-of-conduct#self-promotion
p.s. Please label this comment as Offtopic so it doesn't detract from any on-topic discussion.
Thanks, I'm aware of the rules and I want to point out that I am active in other parts of this community. Additionally, I have another account that I'm also active with that I don't necessarily want associated with my real name.
Fair enough. I just genuinely don't want to see people get inadvertently banned for unknowingly breaking the self-promotion rule, which is why I mention it whenever I notice a new account that only seems to post their own content.
I don't actually enforce the rules though, so if you do have another account that you're more active on it might be worth letting @Deimos know that so he doesn't ban this one by assuming you're just spamming here.