Paul WalkHead of Technology Strategy and Planning, EDINA

p.walk@ed.ac.uk@paulwalk

Static Site Generators: what they are and when they are useful

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)

what are they?

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

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 file6. other non-core features

• 'shortcodes'• data as content (i.e. data in structured files such as JSON or YAML)• plugins

1. content-model

• text files arranged in folder hierarchy

• folder hierarchy relates to URL path structure

• filename relates to URL

2. content pages

• "front-matter" metadata• often in YAML format like here

• main body in Markdown, arbitrary HTML also accepted where necessary

---author: Paul Walkcategories: []date: 2016-03-29T17:18:13+01:00description: ""draft: falsetags: ["eprints","oai-pmh"]title: RIOXX and metadata only recordstopics: []---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 institution. We have the RIOXX plugin installed and I have a question about the licence_ref attribute.> > I am creating a metadata-only journal article record into our repository which includes a DOI link to the

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 .

4. generator software

• used to generate new content:

• also used to run a local sever to see how the site will look

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

example: rioxx site deployment

436 known generators

https://staticsitegenerators.net

why should you care?

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

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

what do you need to use them?

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 :-)

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!