Static Web Generators and CMSes

Static Web Generators and CMSes

Byrichard

For weeks, or even months, by now I have been playing/experimenting with Hugo, 11ty and other solutions. I really like that with Hugo I can use FrontMatter as a CMS to create new posts, add the appropriate meta data, and keep track of what is published and what is in draft form. It allows me to create posts with the right metadata in seconds, rather than having to write the date, time, draft status and more by hand. It also generates the right file title for good archival practices.

Decap CMS

As I was looking for a CMS tool to make managing 11ty content easier I came across Decap CMS and it seemed interesting. I installed a version locally, and then I started to look at the code manually, rather than using the CMS tool. It felt complicated so I did some more research. Eventually I learned that in order to play with Decap CMS you need to setup a netlify account, a github account and then expose yourself to accidental charges when playing with a static website generator. I was struck by the paradox. Why would you use a CMS tool that requires you to commit to an external hosting tool? Why not use ClassicPress or WordPress and cut out the middle man. Of course the short answer is “because you still generate a static tool, but the interface is intuitive for non coders.

Yet Another Service

By requiring us to set things up via Netlify we’re forced to use yet another service, which is fine, when you’re using the service in the first place. I am not.

FrontMatter.Code

Within a few minutes frontmatter.codes could be setup locally do do what I want, to manage documents and frontmatter for an 11ty site. In so doing I keep development on the local machine, only connecting to the external server when I’m uploading site changes. I can use the same workflow as I have for Hugo, once I set it up.

ClassicPress and WordPress

It’s easier, for me to setup a ClassicPress or WordPress CMS and use that. ClassicPress feels very fast and I can use markdown or html for pages that I am creating, or that already exist. Within a short amount of time I can do what Decap CMS does, anywhere I want.

For WordPress you can use this method/tutorial or with the free playground option. Within seconds you can have a wordpress instance running on azure, up and ready for a new site and content.

In particular, while App Service F1 will not generate any cost, database usage is chargeable for “pay as you go” plans or when the usage limit of 750 hours per month for 12 months is exceeded. So, in order to ensure they will not pay for the WordPress playground, developers should monitor and track their database usage.

With this tool a wordpress instance is prepared for you, and for a month you can see what the cost would be, before jumping into a financial commitment.

And Finally

If I am experimenting with a Static website generator like Hugo or 11ty I want to have local versions to play with, rather than remote ones that may cost something if I am not careful. If I’m reading it correctly the basic plan I’m experimenting with is 3 CHF per month for a server in Northern Switzerland. With this “playground” I have the opportunity to experiment, and see whether that is the case.

The testing options are cheap, but for production Azure and other cloud solutions are expensive, which is why we use other cloud solutions, especially for personal sites. I will spend time experimenting with Frontmatter, set up for 11ty, following this learning experience.

2020 – The Golden Opportunity to Be A Recluse

Byrichard

2020 – The Golden Opportunity to be a Recluse. If you’ve ever wanted a reason not to be social then open society’s behaviour, in regards to the COVID-19 virus, has provided us with a fantastic opportunity to enjoy being reclusive.


During a normal Spring and Summer I would be driving to the mountains to hike, climb and enjoy via ferrata with people but this year those plans have been destroyed. This year we can’t share the same room as others to sleep. We can’t even eat within two meters of other people.


There are no handshakes, no hugs and no “bises”. This year if you live alone you’re without physical contact. This year, the more solitary you like to be, the stronger the appeal of such a year.


In a normal year if you were single or below a certain age you’d be pressured to go out and be social, rather than staying at home to work on projects, read books or otherwise be solitary. This year there is no pressure to go out on Thursday and Friday night, and there is no pressure to go out to do group activities during the weekend.


With its single minded desire to reopen too early society has destroyed any chance of a normal summer being possible. Until the 21st of June it looked as if Switzerland was three or four weeks away from the pandemic being over, or at least wonderfully under control. There was a brief window with just 10-20 infections a day.


Speaking as an idealist I believe that we were so close to Switzerland getting to tens of new cases a day but recently the seven-day average is back to 100 cases a day.


Silver Linings


Source: https://www.corona-data.ch/


One of the silver linings is that the number of ventilated people declined to zero for several days, the number of intensive hospital cases is staying low and finally, that the number of regular COVID-19 patients was in decline, until two days ago.


At its maxium number of active infections Switzerland was at 98 percent of ICU capacity. Two more percent and triage would have been required.


Depending on whether you work for the airport or think as an environmentalist Geneva airport expects to be at 19 percent of capacity this summer, due to so few people travelling at the moment. It’s great for the environment, but a shame for jobs.


Societal Self Harm


Speaking from a strictly theoretical point of view we have centuries of pandemics to look back on. We have books such as La Peste by Camus, to turn back to. In theory, we know what to do in the case of pandemics, and how to avoid them. We also know how to control them.


We know that in Medieval times villages would shut down to the outside world for weeks or months at a time. We know that ships were quarantined offshore. In some cases, places of infection were marked.


As we watch the current pandemic we get the impression that lessons were never learned. We get the impression that people never studied plagues and other epidemics and pandemics. We get the impression that people are flying blind. This is a shame.


It’s a shame because we are in the 21st century. We live in an age where we have thousands of hours of documentaries about plagues, disease and epidemics. We live in an age where people can get advice and information straight from medical health professionals. We live in an age where everything can be ordered online. We live in an age where being trapped at home does not mean having conversations has to stop. We live in an age where many of us are information workers.


In light of all of this it seems illogical that we would live through the worst pandemic in human history.


I have seen a lot of discussion about rights but responsibilities have been skirted. The responsibility to wear a mask, the responsibility to keep human to human interactions to a minimum, the responsibility to avoid people rather than expect them to make the effort to be safe.


The self-sacrifice of not going on holiday, the self-sacrifice of not going to sit in a park half a meter from others…


With everything that society, as a whole knows, it is a shame that the pandemic coalesced into such a serious problem because we had the tools and knowledge to ensure that it would be dealt with as swiftly as the epidemics we have already lived through, in our own lifetimes.


At its core Switzerland, until the 21st of June Switzerland was doing everything right, and to a serious degree it is still doing the right thing, with the number of ventilated people being at zero and the number of serious cases also dropping.


At it’s core my only issue is with having a third summer with limited opportunities to meet new people. As long as the pandemic is around it seems more logical to give in, and use dating apps, to meet new people, instead.


The Up-Skilling opportunity.


A few weeks ago I sad that I would try to create my own WordPress theme, but I overshot that goal by learning CSS and redesigning my entire website. I have learned to create a CMS from scratch using PHP and MySQL. Now I’m learning Ruby On Rails and it’s going well. Ruby on Rails looks like an intuitive framework to work with. I’m working on changing my career path.

|

FaceBook’s Primitive Content Management System

Byrichard

Facebook’s Primitive Content Management System, because aside from being a social media platform, it is a CMS, makes it very hard to delete posts, images, and more in bulk. Facebook should be seen as a CMS because it allows us to share images, posts, events, and more.


As a CMS we should have more control over how we handle our data on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. Privacy settings that are not bulk editable retro-actively, are not of much use because no one will spend days or weeks tidying up their timelines.


With a CMS like Wordpress you can go to See all posts, choose “show two hundred posts” and you can delete 200 posts at a time. This means that, if for any reason you decide to tidy up old content, you can do so within a short period of time.


With Facebook, you have three choices. Choice one is to go and manually delete thousands of posts and spend several days doing so. The second option is simply to delete your old Facebook account and start from scratch and the third option is simply to dump Facebook entirely.


Facebook should offer users the option to curate their content quickly and efficiently. It currently has a monopoly because it is the primary social network that people use to share events, participate in group discussions and more.


As with real life we have good days and we have bad days. It should be possible to delete multiple posts at once. With spam comments we can “Empty spam” both in e-mail applications and WordPress comment sections.


Every e-mail client allows us to delete multiple messages at once. Inbox Zero and other concepts rely on this.


With MySQL we can drop the post table in less than a second. We should have such functionality on Facebook, Instagram and other social networks. Without this functionality we are limited in who we can accept as friends. We can only accept people whom we know and trust not to form prejudiced opinions based on what we wrote on a bad day.


If the only way to set the clock back to zero on Facebook and Twitter is to delete our accounts then we are encouraged to dump social networks altogether.


In the age of GDPR and other privacy-protecting measures these options should be available to users. We should also have an option to say “If user=”new” show “only posts from the day we became friends on Facebook””.


| |

Trying Out Drupal

Byrichard

I’ve just spent at least two hours playing around with drupal. I was working on bit by bit and actually had a case where I had to RTFM. Over the past few hours, I was trying to understand why I couldn’t place the blocks where I wanted. Finally, I found out. I had forgotten to upload the themes folder therefore no content was uploaded.

It’s a Content management system, developed so that people may contribute new content without the hassle of uploading HTML files. I’ve used a few but this is the best implementation so far.

So far my impressions are good. I’m running version 5.1 of Drupal, the most recent one. It’s got quite a good number of features and looks really flexible so I may have quite a bit of fun with it.

At the moment drupal is not available for direct viewing by people visiting my page but as I get it to behave as I want it to I may bring it forward. As a result, I may finally bring my website into the web 2.0 world. It will be database driven from this point forward rather than static pages as it had been till then.

I’m happy with it. Time to continue playing with it.