I appreciate the sentiment behind this but I don't think static site generators are the solution.
What a static website lacks is interaction with visitors.
Interaction with other people is the whole point of going on the internet.
Forums and comment sections on blogs is the reason we go on the internet. It's the reason people visit HN. If you couldn't write comments, would you visit the website? Maybe you would, but a lot less frequently. For example, I don't visit the lobsters website because I can't sign up for an account so I can't participate in discussions.
The problem is that setting up and maintaing a website in 2022 is quite cumbersome and tiring. No one wants to maintain a web server with the correct configuration of which versions of which applications are installed, where their configs files are, and what the contents of these configuration files are. Which is what you have to do with any of the existing solutions like Wordpress or Ghost or similar products.
A website should just be a program. A program you run and it manages itself. You shouldn't have to manage it. Programs are for automating things with computers.
In 2022, it's not difficult at all to write a program that does all of the following:
- Be an http(s) server (listen on the http and https ports and implement the http protocol)
- Manage its own data storage (database as library, not as a separate program that needs to be setup and configured separately).
- Manage the acquisition and updating of certificates for https (thanks to the ACME protocol and Let's Encrypt)
- Handle thousands of concurrent connections on cheap hardware (about $5/mo) without breaking a sweat
- Manage its own installation. For example, the user need only run a program on his own computer, give it the IP of the server he wants to host the website on, along with root username and password, and that program will do everything necessary to setup the website program and install it on the server. It should not take more than a few seconds (less than 10 seconds, and that's being very generous with time).
I'm not sure why no one is working on such a thing. It seems like a very low hanging fruit.
I suspect that people look at the current landscape and see that users prefer managed solutions like Substack over self-hosted solutions like Ghost, and they conclude that no one wants to self-host their own website.
I think they are wrong.
No one wants to self-host using any of the existing solutions because they all suck in that you have to sort of be a sysadmin in order to self host.
People think this is a fundamental properly of self-hosting and don't realize it's just a coincidence that all current solutions are like that but that things don't actually have to be that way.
For what it's worth, with many Hugo themes, it is possible to add a "Disqus" (or other provider) comment section to posts by simply adding a token to the static site's config file. See: https://gohugo.io/content-management/comments/
This is also possible with other static site generators like Hexo and Jekyll.
What a static website lacks is interaction with visitors.
Interaction with other people is the whole point of going on the internet.
Forums and comment sections on blogs is the reason we go on the internet. It's the reason people visit HN. If you couldn't write comments, would you visit the website? Maybe you would, but a lot less frequently. For example, I don't visit the lobsters website because I can't sign up for an account so I can't participate in discussions.
The problem is that setting up and maintaing a website in 2022 is quite cumbersome and tiring. No one wants to maintain a web server with the correct configuration of which versions of which applications are installed, where their configs files are, and what the contents of these configuration files are. Which is what you have to do with any of the existing solutions like Wordpress or Ghost or similar products.
A website should just be a program. A program you run and it manages itself. You shouldn't have to manage it. Programs are for automating things with computers.
In 2022, it's not difficult at all to write a program that does all of the following:
- Be an http(s) server (listen on the http and https ports and implement the http protocol)
- Manage its own data storage (database as library, not as a separate program that needs to be setup and configured separately).
- Manage the acquisition and updating of certificates for https (thanks to the ACME protocol and Let's Encrypt)
- Handle thousands of concurrent connections on cheap hardware (about $5/mo) without breaking a sweat
- Manage its own installation. For example, the user need only run a program on his own computer, give it the IP of the server he wants to host the website on, along with root username and password, and that program will do everything necessary to setup the website program and install it on the server. It should not take more than a few seconds (less than 10 seconds, and that's being very generous with time).
I'm not sure why no one is working on such a thing. It seems like a very low hanging fruit.
I suspect that people look at the current landscape and see that users prefer managed solutions like Substack over self-hosted solutions like Ghost, and they conclude that no one wants to self-host their own website.
I think they are wrong.
No one wants to self-host using any of the existing solutions because they all suck in that you have to sort of be a sysadmin in order to self host.
People think this is a fundamental properly of self-hosting and don't realize it's just a coincidence that all current solutions are like that but that things don't actually have to be that way.