static site generator

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A Static site generator or SSG is software 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.

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

Advantages

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

Disadvantages

Most SSGs are written as CLI programs and are difficult for non-technical people to learn
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/

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.

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 is building letsjam, a static site generator built with Python and jinja2. James formerly used Jekyll 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.
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