Static Web Site Design Tools
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What @black3dynamite is mentioning is probably best.
I guess I just don't see how a WYSIWYG is helping with "web design". For content creators I can see the point, but if you're actually doing design you're not using a WYSIWYG editor.
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@stacksofplates said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
I guess I just don't see how a WYSIWYG is helping with "web design". For content creators I can see the point, but if you're actually doing design you're not using a WYSIWYG editor.
That's true. But there is a pretty big chasm in complexity between what the majority of web designers are used to using, which is mostly WordPress, and what tools like Hugo do. One gives you graphical feedback instantly, one requires a lot of confusing work before you can even tell something exists.
Designers, by their very nature, are graphical. We are IT people the CLI is our native environment. Designers are the opposite. Hugo might actually be easier for me, rather than harder. But for a traditional designer, it's hard enough to induce panic. Whereas WordPress is just "pick it up and start playing".
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There's also an experimental WordPress importer too.
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@scottalanmiller said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
@stacksofplates said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
I guess I just don't see how a WYSIWYG is helping with "web design". For content creators I can see the point, but if you're actually doing design you're not using a WYSIWYG editor.
That's true. But there is a pretty big chasm in complexity between what the majority of web designers are used to using, which is mostly WordPress, and what tools like Hugo do. One gives you graphical feedback instantly, one requires a lot of confusing work before you can even tell something exists.
Designers, by their very nature, are graphical. We are IT people the CLI is our native environment. Designers are the opposite. Hugo might actually be easier for me, rather than harder. But for a traditional designer, it's hard enough to induce panic. Whereas WordPress is just "pick it up and start playing".
Well that's what I mean though. Say you edit a CSS file in the theme you're using for Hugo, if you're using the local server you immediately see those changes. And at least in my experience, most of that is done in the browser first with the browsers developer tools, and then transferred to your source when you get it how you like it.
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Publii Documentation is not bad either.
https://getpublii.com/docs/ -
@stacksofplates said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
@scottalanmiller said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
@stacksofplates said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
I guess I just don't see how a WYSIWYG is helping with "web design". For content creators I can see the point, but if you're actually doing design you're not using a WYSIWYG editor.
That's true. But there is a pretty big chasm in complexity between what the majority of web designers are used to using, which is mostly WordPress, and what tools like Hugo do. One gives you graphical feedback instantly, one requires a lot of confusing work before you can even tell something exists.
Designers, by their very nature, are graphical. We are IT people the CLI is our native environment. Designers are the opposite. Hugo might actually be easier for me, rather than harder. But for a traditional designer, it's hard enough to induce panic. Whereas WordPress is just "pick it up and start playing".
Well that's what I mean though. Say you edit a CSS file in the theme you're using for Hugo, if you're using the local server you immediately see those changes. And at least in my experience, most of that is done in the browser first with the browsers developer tools, and then transferred to your source when you get it how you like it.
I assume it isn't too bad. For most designers, though, they don't edit CSS regularly. Some do, but not most. Most designers are working with themes and all of the CSS that they edit is exposed in the GUI. If they do edit CSS it's generally a one off activity and very isolated.
There are certainly designers who do lots of CSS, but they aren't the majority. And the kind of designers that'll be using this will be doing minor modifications to very established templates.
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@black3dynamite said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
Publii Documentation is not bad either.
https://getpublii.com/docs/Yeah, you can get up and running pretty quickly.
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I really like Grav. It's a great static site platform, but is technically CMS and not easy for the layman to set up.
Perhaps straight HTML in an HTML editor is best then.
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@Obsolesce said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
Perhaps straight HTML in an HTML editor is best then.
An option for sure, but do you know of one? I mean, they exist. But one that does a good job?
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@Obsolesce said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
I really like Grav. It's a great static site platform, but is technically CMS and not easy for the layman to set up.
It's a cool tool, but it isn't static. It's flat file, but it just uses the file system as a database (which filesystems are by their nature) rather than a DBMS. Grav would meet many of the needs, but it is dynamic and requires PHP which ideally we'd avoid.
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So after a week or two, I've played around with a few things. Publii seems really cool, but a little harder than it should be to get something nice done. But I'm still testing it. The basics are great.
@Obsolesce recommended privately that I test out Jekyll and he was right that it's great. I did the first full test with it and I think even though it isn't exactly what I was looking for that it is going to be the long term winner. I like the architecture of Publii more, but the reality of Jekyll might be what meets my needs best.
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@scottalanmiller said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
So after a week or two, I've played around with a few things. Publii seems really cool, but a little harder than it should be to get something nice done. But I'm still testing it. The basics are great.
@Obsolesce recommended privately that I test out Jekyll and he was right that it's great. I did the first full test with it and I think even though it isn't exactly what I was looking for that it is going to be the long term winner. I like the architecture of Publii more, but the reality of Jekyll might be what meets my needs best.
I thought you were looking for something easier for a web designer?
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@black3dynamite said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
@scottalanmiller said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
So after a week or two, I've played around with a few things. Publii seems really cool, but a little harder than it should be to get something nice done. But I'm still testing it. The basics are great.
@Obsolesce recommended privately that I test out Jekyll and he was right that it's great. I did the first full test with it and I think even though it isn't exactly what I was looking for that it is going to be the long term winner. I like the architecture of Publii more, but the reality of Jekyll might be what meets my needs best.
I thought you were looking for something easier for a web designer?
Honestly, it's SO easy. I prefer the architecture of Publii for that purpose. But Jekyll seems even easier.
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I quickly found a problem that would keep me from using Publii personally and that's no native LaTeX support. After showing it to a friend and how easy it was to setup and use, I wondered if I could convert one of my sites to it. However I have to have good math support and it doesn't. For any other user it seems to work great.
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Playing with Hugo today and I'm liking it a lot. Thanks for pressuring me to stick with it till I got it working
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Have you looked at Forestry.io ? It's a gui front end for most of the popular statics site generators:
Gatsby
Hugo
Gridsome
Jekyll
11ty
etc. -
@scottalanmiller said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
Playing with Hugo today and I'm liking it a lot. Thanks for pressuring me to stick with it till I got it working
I got Hugo working well and set up in Azure DevOps so rebuild the site when I commit and push an update to the master repo.
I really like it. Jekyll was great too, but now I think I prefer Hugo.
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@JasGot said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
Have you looked at Forestry.io ? It's a gui front end for most of the popular statics site generators:
Gatsby
Hugo
Gridsome
Jekyll
11ty
etc.That looks interesting. I'd prefer that for maybe a blog because it makes a nicer maybe more convenient writing experience IMO vs text based methods.
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@JasGot said in Static Web Site Design Tools:
Have you looked at Forestry.io ? It's a gui front end for most of the popular statics site generators
Looking now. I must be missing something, though. Because it looks like for my personal user it is $750/mo which seems, well, absolutely insane.
