@viq it's really broken. Loads of bugs, poor performance from rendering to SEO integrations, lack of basic features like post filtering or change revision. The infrastructure is a mess too - awful templating for custom themes, weird object distinction between "pages" and "posts" with different routing that override each other. I could go on and on but there no value it adds over static blog generators.
Just get #publii static site generator desktop app and post for free on netlify :)
@sycarion
It's great to hear about people using Publii.
I'm hoping to use it to publish websites, including imported WordPress websites on #Autonomi. When I found #Publii I couldn't believe it because it is something I wanted to build almost a decade ago but wasn't able to get beyond a concept.
I haven't been this excited about something for years!
#Publii has impressed! A desktop app #CMS for static websites.
The UX could be improved but is good enough and what it provides is awesome!
Works on Linux, Mac & Windows very like WordPress - but no servers!
So you can customise the website, create and format blog posts, preview locally and publish to different static hosting services all very easily.WordPress like themes and plugins from an online marketplace. :+1:
I'm looking again at static website builders now that Safe Network is happening (beta this month, launch in October).
I was set up to deploy my #dWeb blog simultaneously to web and Safe Network using #ReactStatic but sadly that is no longer maintained (but still works).
So I'm working on one using my favourite #Svelte. Also trying #Publii, a WYSIWYG site editor which looks interesting. Not the best UX but could help a lot of folks get online, on web and the #decentralised#p2p#SafeNetwork.
It's a static site generator. Unlike many others, Publii is a graphical application, very easy to use. It manages content edition with 3 different methods:
Wysiwyg editor
Block editor (inspired by Medium IHMO)
Markdown editor
Adding images is simple, you can select one as featured for Organic data, put one in the header for the site or for each post.
It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.
Couple of posts up there. Complete experiment atm, no idea if I'll carry on with it, but I'm finding it fun as hell using Publii so far.
I was also able to completely export my entire Wordpress website at nerdrooted.com over to Publii too, so that's an option for the future should I decide to go all in on this venture.
Been playing around with #Publii today. Interesting little application.
For those unaware of it, it's a static CMS application which generates static themed webpages, for blog/portfolio etc content. Similar to Wordpress, but entirely self-contained.
It's a nice little application, and the pages it produces are pretty good looking, and there are various themes available, just like WP, albeit nowhere nearly as many for obvious reasons.
I haven't blogged since May of last year, since the collapse of Twitter largely, as most of my blogging on Nerdrooted was/is around World of Warcraft.
Something like #Publii though might make it easier to create secondary & tertiary blogs around different subjects, such as Linux, Privacy, Open Source, other games, hell even on my life experiences with Autism and ADHD...
Still deciding if I should go down that route, or just diversify the content I make on Nerdrooted...
I really do love the experience of creating one-off pages that are consistently themed and look good.
But on the flip side there's ignoring literally YEARS of content on Nerdrooted.
I know that blogging as a creative "art-form" is very out of fashion these days, but frankly I don't really care.
The article I've semi-written using #Publii delves into much of the reasoning behind that, so I might just start producing more diverse content on the platform I already pay for and have...
I feel like I’ve gone through another set of “try something new other than WordPress but came back to WordPress” yet again.
I discovered Hugo and I use it on my main website, which I call a “digital cafe” over at https://binarydigit.cafe.
https://binarydigit.coffee/hello-again-wordpress/After getting the hang of the static site generator, Hugo, I found an awesome them – Blowfish.page and absolutely love it. I want to still keep the concept of a “digital garden” on that site, so it serves more static informational pages. It’s the place where I want to call “home” and point folks to if they are looking for information about me or my interests. I want to build it up like a wiki and note taking site and keep it fun like all of my sites. I even added webmentions which was a feat on it’s own.
Still Missing Something
After I was done, sitting down and writing up a post seemed a bit of a chore. I had to be on my Mac (since I set git up with my dev tools there), and I have to deliberately create my post, fine a a feature image, resize it or create it etc. I became a bit lazy and then wrote the post “Not a Blogger“. I thought maybe I just didn’t want to blog, but I admitted to opening up a Tumblr account again and having fun with hand curating and blogging short form.
Trying out Other Platforms
I tried self hosting with flat files. I tried Ghost. I tried 11ty. I checked our various commenting systems. Nothing was as satisfying as a CMS with an “easy to type up and add photos admin interface”, that I can do on any computer I have and my phone or tablet. I was missing the ease of having a choice of a million plugins if I needed indie web integrations, ActivityPub, webmentions, and native comments. WordPress has them all, even if a site can be bloated if you aren’t careful.
So here I am, back on a clean install of WordPress, clean install of plugins, only the ones I need. It turns out there are a crap ton of them. But I’m very happy to be back for now. Until I discover the perfect SSG with CMS integration (and even willing to pay for it). Plus I have 2 more years of shared hosting so it’s the perfect time to use it.
Welcome to my personal blog of micro posts, and writing whatever the heck I like, and not using social media for it. My internet home is the cafe and this coffee site is for small sips of content.
You can follow this blog on the fediverse at @binarydigit@binarydigit.coffee ☕Thanks for reading!
The experience of changing web host is a good reminder of why normal people just post to Medium, Facebook or some other system they have no ownership or control over. If we want people to own their web presence and content, we need better software.
I've tested way too many CMSs, static site generators and web design applications. I typically start by trying to put together a simple page with an <h1> heading, a few <p> paragraphs, and a <ul> bulleted list. It's amazing how many alleged web publishing tools fail this basic test — even ones that want a $79 licensing fee. (I'm looking at you, RapidWeaver.)
Anyway, if your web site doesn't run to many thousands of pages, my recommendation is Publii. <https://getpublii.com>. It's the only thing I've found that's at least as usable as WordPress, works with commodity hosting, and also generates good HTML, CSS and images. It's free and open source, GPL licensed. #Publii#WebHosting#WordPress#CMS#Web0