Presentation on the merits of static-website generators, especially compared to CMS systems such as Wordpress or Drupal.

1. Paul Walk
Head of Technology Strategy and Planning,
EDINA
p.walk@ed.ac.uk
@paulwalk
Static Site Generators: what they are and
when they are useful

2. contents
• what are static-site generators?
• why should you care?
• what do you need to use them?
• (I will use the example of the RIOXX website, which is built with an application
called Hugo)

3. what are they?

4. what are static site generators?
• a different kind of web-content management system, designed to publish
content as static content to a bog-standard web-server.
• content is processed during the publishing operation, rather than when the
user requests content (although client-side Javascript still supported)
• simple command-line application to generate content and serve pages
• no database - content in semi-structured text files

5. components - standard to most systems
1. content-model
• folder hierarchy, text files
2. content pages
• (markdown, front-matter)
• blog type content is also often supported
3. templates (& themes)
• (with some level of basic scripting)
4. generator software
• typically a command-line script or application
5. configuration file
6. other non-core features
• 'shortcodes'
• data as content (i.e. data in structured files such as JSON or YAML)
• plugins

6. 1. content-model
• text files arranged in folder
hierarchy
• folder hierarchy relates to URL path
structure
• filename relates to URL

7. 2. content pages
• "front-matter" metadata
• often in YAML format like here
• main body in Markdown, arbitrary
HTML also accepted where necessary
---
author: Paul Walk
categories: []
date: 2016-03-29T17:18:13+01:00
description: ""
draft: false
tags: ["eprints","oai-pmh"]
title: RIOXX and metadata only
records
topics: []
---
I received the following query from
Emma Sansby, Head of Library
Services at Bishop Grosseteste
University:
> I am currently leading a project to
implement Eprints (hosted and
supported by ULCC) at my

8. 3. templates
• can reference metadata (e.g. 'page title') from content page
• can re-use 'partial' templates (e.g. a common 'header' & 'footer')
• often in a common templating language such as HAML
• (example below is in Go's templating syntax)
= include partials/header.html .
div.row-fluid
div class="col-xs-12"
h1.page-title {{if .Draft}}[**draft**]{{end}}{{.Title}}
h2.page-title
i {{.Params.author}}, {{.Date.Format "Monday, January 02, 2006"}}
{{.Content}}
= include partials/share_buttons.html .
= include _internal/disqus.html .
= include partials/footer.html .

9. 4. generator software
• used to generate new content:
• also used to run a local sever to see how the site will look

10. deployment options
• SFTP (no one uses FTP anymore, right....?)
• Rsync (over SSH)
• git commit hooks (or GitHub webhooks)
• requires the site to be built on the server, so more infrastructure required
• Dropbox

11. example: rioxx site deployment

12. 436 known generators
https://staticsitegenerators.net

13. why should you care?

14. the case against big CMS (Wordpress, Drupal etc.)
• complexity (require infrastructure - notably a database)
• more points of failure
• overkill for small websites
• require frequent maintenance for security and resilience
• even when the website is in 'legacy' mode
• replication for resilience and/or scaling is non-trivial
• responding to sudden peaks in demand is difficult
• backup and long-term preservation is very difficult
• typically need to preserve complex software & a database

15. Pros and cons
• Pros
• can manage many contributors,
with different levels of access
• (non-tech) user-friendly
authoring env.
• Cons
• significant sysadmin burden
• infrastructural reqs
• plugins make this worse
• content preservation challenge
• Pros
• developer-friendly authoring env
• minimal sysadmin burden
• minimal infrastructural reqs
• supports content preservation
• very responsive websites
• Cons
• basic access control (e.g. git repo)
• (non-tech) user-friendly authoring
env.
Content Management System Static website generator

16. what do you need to
use them?

17. authoring tools
• a good Markdown-friendly editor with 'preview' support
• any old text editor at a pinch....
• access to command line tool such as SFTP or Rsync for deployment
• web browser
• that's it :-)

18. when to consider using them
• if you need to build & manage a website which:
• will have one, or a small number, of users
• will be relatively simple
• won't have major 'dynamic' requirements
• will need to be preserved, even after it is no longer a live site
• in short - a project website is a good candidate!