Website backend

Haven't been hosting websites for years and I would like to host some small websites with static texts.

Don't want to spend a lot of time hand-designing so a quick template + content would be ideal.

What would be a good backend to host it on, besides Wordpress?

The all seeing eye sees everything...

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Comments

  • LeeLee OG
    edited February 2020

    Wordpress is clearly going to be the easiest, but you could use getgrav.org, lots of templates on offer, no database, pretty simple, easy to backup and so on. If you are using a shared host then it is also available in Softaculous so even easier to get going.

  • @terrorgen said:
    Haven't been hosting websites for years and I would like to host some small websites with static texts.

    Don't want to spend a lot of time hand-designing so a quick template + content would be ideal.

    What would be a good backend to host it on, besides Wordpress?

    I have played with Pico a little. Pretty neat and decent. :) http://picocms.org/

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  • edited February 2020

    I like Flatpress. It's like Wordpress but drops the database requirement and seems to run a bit more lean.

    If you want to get really crazy, you can check out BashBlog. It's a single bash script you can run to manage your blog. You do need shell access, of course, but it's 100% static with no server-side stuff required.

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  • vyasvyas OG
    edited February 2020

    Flextype or Bludit. Been using both. Neither needs a database backend .

    And datenstrom yellow. Its as simple as it gets.

    Textpattern is another great non WP option for text but needs db

    Grav is good but i find it too flaky. Maybe just tired of the twig errors.

    @somik that is a good list but I use the Wikipedia list. Because it shows version and date of last release.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems

    @CamoYoshi I like flatpress too but the default theme is not mobile responsive and the dark theme leads to ghosting of text. Did you have any success overcoming the latter?

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  • I haven't used many, but this satisfied all my needs
    https://www.sphinx-doc.org

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  • This is a good place to look:

    https://www.cmscritic.com/awards/

    Thanked by (2)vyas terrorgen
  • vyasvyas OG
    edited February 2020

    @Kyle_ said:
    This is a good place to look:

    https://www.cmscritic.com/awards/

    There used to be a site that had over 305 of the estimated 1900 plus Content Management Systems. This one comes close. a Plus point for recency. .

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  • Thank you guys that should be enough to start with. :+1: :+1:

    LESbians never fail to deliver!

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  • WSSWSS OGRetired

    Back that end up.

    Personally, although not 100% static by default, I really, really, really like TextPattern. It's kind of like being thrown into Unix after using Windows your whole life. It's weird, kind of difficult to understand, and 3 months later, you'll never look back. EVERYTHING is customizable by default, and the code is a lot less ugly than WordPress.

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  • vyasvyas OG
    edited February 2020

    @WSS said:
    It's kind of like being thrown into Unix after using Windows your whole life.

    Every 3 months or so, I set up a test site/ subdomain, install TextPattern, spend an afternoon playing around with it, then I never go back. Now that I know the reason (coming from WordPress, it DOES feel like Unix - or a worse analogy is MS Word to vi ) so it takes some effort to get the hang of.

  • vyasvyas OG
    edited February 2020

    I should have found this sooner- would have avoided another post.

    Whatcms .org. nearly 500 content management systems. WP not surprisingly the most popular.

    https://whatcms.org/Tech_Reports

    Also like the feature "What wordpress theme is that" for WP sites...

  • Hugo is really easy to use, and it has a decent amount of templates.

    Grav is also good for something more dynamic then a true static site.

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  • WSSWSS OGRetired
    edited February 2020

    @vyas said:

    @WSS said:
    It's kind of like being thrown into Unix after using Windows your whole life.

    Every 3 months or so, I set up a test site/ subdomain, install TextPattern, spend an afternoon playing around with it, then I never go back. Now that I know the reason (coming from WordPress, it DOES feel like Unix - or a worse analogy is MS Word to vi ) so it takes some effort to get the hang of.

    If you spend like 3 days setting up a custom view, you will see the difference between the data, the views, and the presentation. It's actually really elegant if you have a bit of history with typesetting (I don't). It drove me nuts for awhile, but after 16 years with it, I think I've got it figured out- but enough about vi.

    --

    @FlamingSpaceJunk said:
    Hugo is really easy to use, and it has a decent amount of templates.

    Grav is also good for something more dynamic then a true static site.

    I tried both of these, and more, when I was thinking of ditching TXP. I eventually gave up on both of them because it took more effort handrolling templates/markdown/etc. I just want to be able to shitpost-and-go with marginal needs to login and push things. If I wanted to write it in vi, I'd do that.

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  • Why not a static website generator like https://gohugo.io/ ?

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  • WSSWSS OGRetired

    @foxone said:
    Why not a static website generator like https://gohugo.io/ ?

    https://gohugo.io/getting-started/installing

    That's why.

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  • Hugo is really good, way faster than Jekyll if you have a lot of pages to build.

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  • @WSS said:

    @foxone said:
    Why not a static website generator like https://gohugo.io/ ?

    https://gohugo.io/getting-started/installing

    That's why.

    What's why?

  • @WSS said:
    I tried both of these, and more, when I was thinking of ditching TXP. I eventually gave up on both of them because it took more effort handrolling templates/markdown/etc. I just want to be able to shitpost-and-go with marginal needs to login and push things. If I wanted to write it in vi, I'd do that.

    That's the thing. I want to write it in vi then publish it. Well, write it in vim, neovim, or spacemacs. :smile:

    I haven't has to handroll templates either one. Both of those have off the shelf themes. I grab a theme, adjust it, and go. I'm not a frontend dev, so building themes from scratch would have been a deal breaker.

    Grav has an admin section where posts can be created. That's why I keep it around. It's a CMS without a requirement on a database.

    My biggest mark against them is that they use Markdown for their content, and I really dislike Markdown.

  • WSSWSS OGRetired

    @foxone said:

    @WSS said:

    @foxone said:
    Why not a static website generator like https://gohugo.io/ ?

    https://gohugo.io/getting-started/installing

    That's why.

    What's why?

    Having to install yet another third party management tool. It's as bad as everything written in PHP requiring Composer these days.


    @FlamingSpaceJunk said:

    @WSS said:
    I tried both of these, and more, when I was thinking of ditching TXP. I eventually gave up on both of them because it took more effort handrolling templates/markdown/etc. I just want to be able to shitpost-and-go with marginal needs to login and push things. If I wanted to write it in vi, I'd do that.

    That's the thing. I want to write it in vi then publish it. Well, write it in vim, neovim, or spacemacs. :smile:

    I'm happy with a textarea, pre-markdown (is markdown but before that existed) markup with transparent HTML inline. I don't really want to remember the various hacks depending on the different markdown implementations, 3 different asterix, etc..

    I haven't has to handroll templates either one. Both of those have off the shelf themes. I grab a theme, adjust it, and go. I'm not a frontend dev, so building themes from scratch would have been a deal breaker.

    There are/were plenty of themes for TXP over the years, the only problem is that most of them uh, date back to 2006 to 2010. I gave up and copied my database over into a clean instance because it was easier.

    Grav has an admin section where posts can be created. That's why I keep it around. It's a CMS without a requirement on a database.

    My biggest mark against them is that they use Markdown for their content, and I really dislike Markdown.

    Everything uses Markdown since it got attributed to a guy stealing intellectual property (whether I agree with his ideology or not is not important), and decided to kill himself rather than go to Club Fed. Textile is basically Markdown, but existed years before that.

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  • @WSS said:

    @vyas said:

    @WSS said:
    It's kind of like being thrown into Unix after using Windows your whole life.

    Every 3 months or so, I set up a test site/ subdomain, install TextPattern, spend an afternoon playing around with it, then I never go back. Now that I know the reason (coming from WordPress, it DOES feel like Unix - or a worse analogy is MS Word to vi ) so it takes some effort to get the hang of.

    If you spend like 3 days setting up a custom view, you will see the difference between the data, the views, and the presentation. It's actually really elegant if you have a bit of history with typesetting (I don't). It drove me nuts for awhile, but after 16 years with it, I think I've got it figured out- but enough about vi.

    Been a while since I played with TextPattern. I think I liked it, but as I was looking for something I could offer a non-techie client, I just went with WP (or some other PHP based CMS, can't recall) ...

  • @WSS said:

    @foxone said:
    What's why?

    Having to install yet another third party management tool. It's as bad as everything written in PHP requiring Composer these days.

    The binary can be downloaded from here: https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases

    I'm sure you know what to do with a binary. :wink:

    Everything uses Markdown since it got attributed to a guy stealing intellectual property (whether I agree with his ideology or not is not important), and decided to kill himself rather than go to Club Fed. Textile is basically Markdown, but existed years before that.

    ... Aaron Schwartz? How does he fit in with this? I've never heard of Markdown being attributed to him. (The whole research paper thing is a debate for another time, but yeah, it was dumb.)

    John Gruber (https://daringfireball.net/) is responsible for Markdown. It gets him spot #2 on my list of people in tech who should be charged with crimes against humanity.

    I'm not advocating for writing everything in LaTex, or saying other markup languages aren't crap in their own way, but they aren't another human centipede created by the tech community the way Markdown is.

    I've worked with Textile. It's not bad. I've also picked up pieces stolen from Emacs Org Mode and reStructuredText in addition to Textile. Org Mode is the closest to most Markdown implementations.

  • WSSWSS OGRetired

    @FlamingSpaceJunk said:

    @WSS said:

    @foxone said:
    What's why?

    Having to install yet another third party management tool. It's as bad as everything written in PHP requiring Composer these days.

    The binary can be downloaded from here: https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases

    No.

    Everything uses Markdown since it got attributed to a guy stealing intellectual property (whether I agree with his ideology or not is not important), and decided to kill himself rather than go to Club Fed. Textile is basically Markdown, but existed years before that.

    ... Aaron Schwartz? How does he fit in with this? I've never heard of Markdown being attributed to him. (The whole research paper thing is a debate for another time, but yeah, it was dumb.)

    Yeah, well, social media and all.

    I've worked with Textile. It's not bad. I've also picked up pieces stolen from Emacs Org Mode and reStructuredText in addition to Textile. Org Mode is the closest to most Markdown implementations.

    It's weird. I learned Textile and could fluently speak it in my sleep - then I stopped updating my blog for about a year and change, then went back to raw HTML inline. I.. still haven't bothered to relearn more than basic Textile. :D

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  • WSSWSS OGRetired

    @flips said:
    Been a while since I played with TextPattern. I think I liked it, but as I was looking for something I could offer a non-techie client, I just went with WP (or some other PHP based CMS, can't recall) ...

    There are actually some pretty simple wrappers people make, and of course it does support XML-RPC, so once you build it and set the pages/tag/etc, it can be completely locked out for non-admins otherwise, and you don't need to upgrade every 8 hours in lieu of possible issues.

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  • flipsflips OG
    edited February 2020

    @WSS said:

    @flips said:
    Been a while since I played with TextPattern. I think I liked it, but as I was looking for something I could offer a non-techie client, I just went with WP (or some other PHP based CMS, can't recall) ...

    There are actually some pretty simple wrappers people make, and of course it does support XML-RPC, so once you build it and set the pages/tag/etc, it can be completely locked out for non-admins otherwise, and you don't need to upgrade every 8 hours in lieu of possible issues.

    Interesting, should install it and test soon =)
    XML-RPC means there should be quite a few clients possible to setup. (Marsedit etc for Mac, and probably lots of other options for Wintendo and Linux.)
    Theming pretty straight forward? :)

  • @WSS said:

    I learned Textile and could fluently speak it in my sleep

    Could you open doors with it ?

  • @WSS said:

    @FlamingSpaceJunk said:

    @WSS said:

    @foxone said:
    What's why?

    Having to install yet another third party management tool. It's as bad as everything written in PHP requiring Composer these days.

    The binary can be downloaded from here: https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases

    No.

    Yeah, come on. Give it a little download. You might like it. :)

  • @WSS said: It's as bad as everything written in PHP requiring Composer these days.

    Aye, this really pisses me off!
    Bloatware.

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  • There's a lot of stuff using Composer? (Laravel, Syphony being large players?) TXP is just plain PHP, no larger frameworks being pulled in?

  • WSSWSS OGRetired

    @flips said:
    There's a lot of stuff using Composer? (Laravel, Syphony being large players?) TXP is just plain PHP, no larger frameworks being pulled in?

    Nope. https://textpattern.com/

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