static site generator

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A static site generator or SSG is software that developers can use (typically requiring command line access) to setup a personal site that uses a set of text content files typically stored on a server, and transforms them into a set of static HTML files for a website.

Why

There are many advantages to using a static site generator for your personal site:

Long term maintenance advantages
Archival ready HTML output
Can be hosted on any webserver
Free or cheap static hosting options are available
No "moving parts"; nothing to break
Easy to get started
Source files can be edited on an operating system. Usually its just text files!
Generators are typically fairly simple programs to write and modify
Lots of existing options; Few are better than most
No database-antipattern
Fewer security vulnerabilities with static HTML+CSS

Why not

There are also many disadvantages to using a static site generator for your personal site:

Most SSGs are written as CLI programs and are difficult for anyone who is not a developer or does not have the time to learn yet another series of magic text commands
Can be difficult to install due to the use of programming language package managers
Most SSGs don't scale well with large data sets
Supporting dynamic interactivity usually requires JavaScript and APIs
Changes can only be shown as quickly as the build runs
SSGs are not always a "simple" option: https://kevq.uk/static-site-generators-are-easy-to-useright/

How to

For details on implementations and examples of IndieWeb building blocks e.g.

How to send & receive Webmentions with static site generators

See:

static site

IndieWeb Examples

rascul is writing his own site generator for https://rascul.io.
bear is writing and using Hakkan.
Emma Kuo is writing and using Skein.
Daniel Goldsmith is using Hugo and writing nanopub, a micropub-endpoint for SSGs
AJ Jordan is writing Stratic and lazymention (Webmention for static sites)
Amit Gawande is using Hugo and posting with micro.blog via a micropub-endpoint
capjamesg uses Aurora to generate his website.
Ethan Yoo is using Hugo for ethanyoo.com and mdBook for his personal wiki
ttntm is using Eleventy to build his site since switching from Hugo in 04/2021
adi is writing and using mkws, a simple static site generator using sh as templating language.
Anthony Ciccarello is using Eleventy to build his site after switching from Jekyll for ciccarello.me
Pablo Morales is using Datenstrom Yellow a flat-file CMS (static site generator) for his website.
jo uses a personalized version of the bashblog script for their blog
Kelson Vibber is using Eleventy to build most of the more recent parts of his main website.
Add yourself here… (see this for more details)

Graphical Editing User Interfaces

Setting up a CMS or micropub service can help make it easier to post without editing files directly. These usually require some kind of continuous integration to allow automatically building and deploying the site whenever these UIs change the underlying files.

Page editing User Interfaces

Some services add the ability to edit pages graphically in a "What You See Is What You Get" style visual editor. This can be more accessible to users without coding experience.

IndieWebCamp Sessions

static site
static site cms
Static hosting
services
CMS
projects
https://github.com/strugee/lazymention app that can handle webmention sending and websub hub pings when notified of new deploy
webmention.io receiver for static sites - https://github.com/martymcguire/morris - bake webmention data during build
https://twitter.com/qubyte/status/1031553113583493122
- "And if you're a web dev like me, it's extremely satisfying to roll a little static site generator and play with things like microformats and webmentions." @qubyte August 20, 2018
Introduction to SSG from 2015
List of SSG
https://twitter.com/zachleat/status/1257414895110369280
- "listen—fine—SSR your static build on demand at request-time but before I’ll get on board we need to agree that you’ve reinvented PHP" @zachleat May 4, 2020
how to make your own https://blog.lmorchard.com/2020/05/25/diy-easy-blog-oven/
https://css-tricks.com/comparing-static-site-generator-build-times/
Waving a thankful goodbye to: static-websites and more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_site_generator#Examples see here for more, no need to make this page a comprehensive list of all SSGs. One minimum criteria for addition could/should be: is anyone here in the community actually using a particular SSG to host their personal site? And if so, get that example before documenting it on this page
Criticism: high admintax “…just to avoid having to type a few brackets.” https://mastodon.social/@rmloveland/112711358776850636
- "I wrote a little more about this problems of debugging static site generators vs just writing HTML“Do you enjoy debugging programming language installations? What about the language’s package ecosystem? What about the language’s deployment model (or lack thereof)? Congratulations, you now get to be a sysadmin who has to care about all of these things. This is a mile high mountain of dependencies to be dealing with all just to avoid having to type a few brackets.”https://logicgrimoire.wordpress.com/2024/07/01/writing-html-by-hand-is-easier-than-debugging-your-static-site-generator/" @rmloveland July 1, 2024
Alternative: write HTML by hand: 2024-07-01 [https://logicgrimoire.wordpress.com/2024/07/01/writing-html-by-hand-is-easier-than-debugging-your-static-site-generator/