I’ve been doing nerd things.

I’ve been playing around with a static site generator called Jekyll.

What is a static site generator, you might ask?

Well, if you created web pages/sites in the old days, you likely wrote every one by hand. That HTML file contained the whole page, with links to images or whatever. There was no database backend, no embedded javascript, etc. If you were really fancy and smart (like me!), you used Server Side Includes to standardize your header and footer, so you’d only need to change it in one place if you wanted it to change across your whole site.

Flash forward to the late 2000s/early 2010s, and platforms like WordPress, Blogger, etc came about. They use more sophisticated means to deliver webpage. There are databases involved, lots of code and other shit. It’s all very cool. This site runs on WordPress.

You also have to update your site’s content management system (in this case WordPress) pretty often, as hackers and scumbags are constantly trying to log into it, hack it, steal your information, blah blah blah. All that complexity-based convenience comes with a price.

Another price – in theory these content management systems are kinda slower serving up pages, since they are doing a lot more on the backend.

BUT — these days there are number of programs like Jekyll that generate static pages for you, which you then upload to your space on a server (just like in days-of-yore). Since the pages are just HTML, some CSS, and whatever media you might embed in them, they are less vulnerable to hacking.

Also in theory, all else being equal, since there are not database calls involve and other technical fuckery, the static site should serve up to readers much faster (again – depending on connections speeds, etc., which is true for CMSs too).

The drawback?

You have to work harder setting it all up. You have to understand some stuff like installing things from the command line/terminal/whatever. It is all a lot nerdier than just going a Blogger or WordPress site.

Clearly I have too much time on my hands (I don’t).

So here is test.concretelunch.info. Since I’m just figuring this out, the homepage is still a level down in the directories, but whatever. You get the idea. There is supposed to be a process for moving a WordPress blog over “easily” (it is never easy). We’ll see ….