TheBlackzone Logo

Back to static?

Posted on Friday, July 28, 2017 by TheBlackzone

Habari logo Much to my dismay it looks like the Habari Project is defunct. The project's website is offline since quite a while and there wasn't a single message on the developer mailing list in months. Also, there have been no Tweets since the release of version 0.9.2. I think it's time to look for alternatives...

Almost ten years have passed since I checked for a suitable blogging solution last time. Back then my choice was Habari but there where also a couple of other candidates on my list which I might now going to revisit.

While doing some research in relation to this, one thing I found is the apparently growing trend to renounce from database-driven dynamic content in favour of static HTML pages, created by so-called "static site generators".

Most blogging systems store their information in a server database, retrieve it when needed and then create web pages on-the-fly using software running on the webserver. Static site generators use a different approach. These generators create static HTML pages from templates and intermediate content sources like Markdown or ReST. The resulting static HTML files are then uploaded to the webserver and don't change afterwards.

The advantage of static HTML pages are quite obvious: There is no need to run additional software and a database on the server, thus simplifying maintenance and improving security.

Meanwhile there is huge selection of tools available to create static sites, for example Jeckyll, Pelican or Middleman. But there are many, many others.

In the past I have been running my site on static pages, mainly by authoring the HTML files manually. This is a tedious task and sometimes impracticably. But with the use of an appropriate tool, running on static content again is a viable option I will definitely look into.

Tags: website

Button PreviousMounting Truecrypt Volumes in Linux

Play Quake in your browserButton Next