Hello there,
i hope i’m in the right category here
In recent days a read a lot about static html frameworks like tinkerer, sphinx, jykell…
They all seem to be pretty nice because you don’t have to care about asset compression any more and even security issues seem to be a story of the past - but in usability all of them seem to be a bit 90s.
So you have to type in console and removing posts can be really difficult.
So my actual question is:
Is there sth. like a “cms” you can deploy on your local system to generate a static html site?
Sth. like tinkerer, but with an user friendly backend?
If your primary concern is generating static HTML, the big CMS can do this. That’s exactly what most of the caching simple caching mechanisms will do: they just spit out a static HTML file to disk and that’s what user browsers are reading. When you add a new post, the plugin just generates a fresh set of HTML for you. That’s what Boost module does for Drupal or many of the popular caching modules for Wordpress.
If you’re worried about admin security, just block the whole admin off. Don’t allow any IP to access the admin URL but your own. Or, setup an .htacces/.htpasswd on top of the regular security as an extra measure.
If you’re looking at using static HTML, your normal security concerns are out the window anyway (which is primarily from areas that allow user input like forms or interactions that require an app backend you wouldn’t have).
I have modified both CodeIgniter and Laravel to output their pages into a _STATIC_FOLDER and modified the ,htaccess file to check to see if %{DOCUMENT_ROOT} request exists in the _STATIC_FOLDER. If it does then render the web-age. If it does not exist then proceed to load CodeIgniter/Laravel PHP Framework.
HTML, CSS and JavaScript work OK but $_SESSION and a few PHP server side scripts do not work.
CodeIgniter file caching system creates cached files that also save a timestamp() in the file header which is checked against the caching period and recreates the web-page when expired.
Currently I use FTP to delete individual files or the complete cache directory (which is regenerated.) I have thought of creating a daily curl file to delete cached files and curious to know what user friendly features you would require.
Thats not exactly the same. Correct my if i’m wrong but u still have the php boilerplate even if u use caching - the only difference is, that php searches for cached files and simply serve those instead of generating new content if they are available. So I still have the whole php framework on the server - and to keep at your wordpress example: i can’t imagine that it’s possible to have a wordpress installation on a local server and just push the cache files to a server as a properly working website.
If i do this I don’t have a cms any more and simply could use a static page
So to refine my question:
I’m looking for a cms u can use locally to generate a autonomous, completely static website u can push to any file hoster(without php support and stuff like that - e.g. github and co.)
I spent over 7 years working with CMSs (mainly Drupal) and they are great for end users, but as a programmer you often feel like you’re swimming against a current, customising code that has already been written to get to the way you want. I often felt like the overhead from dependencies wasn’t worth it.
Then recently I discovered static site generators and as an editor and programmer who is working on some personal blog sites, they are perfect. All I have to do is write (in markdown), push to Github and build my site (this could all be automated to), so there are no extra steps in my workflow and the code is lean.
I can also take advantage of git hooks and continuous integration to trigger all sorts of other wonderful things.
Anyway, that’s my use case, if it’s for you and you don’t need anything too complex, then use a static site generator. If it’s for non-technical end-users or you need something like ecommerce, then look at a CMS.
