Show HN: Glyph – Static Site Generator Powered by GitHub Issues and Pages | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Glyph – Static Site Generator Powered by GitHub Issues and Pages

dbriemann.github.io

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There's also a nice comment system based on Github issues that you can install on a static site: https://utteranc.es

Thanks for mentioning this, I didn't know it yet. It looks really interesting.. I will have a look and see if I can use it or if I have to make my own simple integration script.

(it is one of my longer term goals to integrate the comments into the generated sites, for a coherent style.)

edit: I just saw the Haxe docs uses utterance for comments. That's awesome.. I saw when they added comments to the docs but I didn't know it's done via Github.. great!

Author here.. relevant links:

https://github.com/dbriemann/glyph-zero - all instructions are here

https://github.com/dbriemann/glyph - static site generator

If you have any questions or ideas just shoot!

Thanks for sharing.

For those who might be wondering, using OP's GitHub repo as example, the first post in the issue thread[1] gets converted to a blog post[2].

That's pretty cool! Though, it will be tough to pry myself away from my blogging flow that uses Org mode as content source and uses all of the Org+Emacs functionality :)

[1]: https://github.com/dbriemann/blog/issues/2 [2]: https://dbriemann.github.io/blog/2-introducing-glyph-static-...

Sadly I don't have experience with emacs/org mode. Would this feature help in any way: https://github.com/dbriemann/glyph/issues/1 ?

No worries, I wasn't suggesting that you support that. I have a very well established blogging flow and I don't have any reason to move away from it. I just happened to come across this HN post, and found your project interesting.

I didn't want to convert you :D

I just wondered if the linked feature would be useful for orgmode users or if it isn't really relevant. Maybe it would help someone else to use Glyph in a similar manner.

The linked issue is probably useful if someone using Emacs/Org exports Org to Markdown format, and then uploads to a Github issue as that feature proposes. But then I fail to see the advantage of that flow vs just committing the Markdown file to any online git repo and letting Netlify etc. take care of publishing the blog.

Because.. uploading a Markdown file to a Github issue is one thing, but then what about refactoring, occasional post edits, etc.? Probably keep on overwriting the same Github issue with updated Markdown files?

You don't have to reply to these questions here.. just some thought if you do invest time in implementing this feature request.

I just now saw your comment. You are right it takes away some benefits if you don't use the Github markdown editor to write/edit the issues.

The only "benefit" I can still see then is the great commenting system that is attached to each issue.

I added some more features to glyph over the last two weeks however I had not put any more thought into this feature so far. It is really low priority for me right now and I guess it's not THAT useful so that's ok :)

Thanks for your input however. It is always very welcome.

This looks really cool! However I'm confused by in the article it says that one of the downsides us that the blog's style cannot be changed. Then in the glyph readme's, it talks about themes and templates. Can this be expounded upon/clarified? Thanks and very clever stuff.

I think you're referring to the part listing the drawbacks of using GitHub Issues for a blog in general. If you continue to the subsequent "How it works" section, you'll see this:

"Glyph removes all of those drawbacks for you."

Absolutely correct! I was referring to directly blogging via Github issues.

As ugotsta already answered I was referring to directly blogging via Github issues. Then you cannot choose a theme/style.

In contrast Glyph offers you all the custom theming you want (I think) :)

It might be hard to believe but just today morning I was thinking of writing a JS library that would provide access to the github issues/comments and crowd-sourced content can be loaded from Github onto websites. Nice work!

Hehe sometimes people have similar ideas at similar times. When I was researching if something like Glyph already exists I found this: https://github.com/mateogianolio/issuance

You can check it out.. I think it's partly what you described.

Really interesting. I wonder if something similar could be done with Fossil. You'd lose GitHub account integration and static hosting but gain real-time comment updates and a fully self-hosting platform.

Thanks. Just for clarification.. did you mean https://www.fossil-scm.org ?

Yes.

Just wondering, is this negatively taking advantage of Github Pages in any way?

I vaguely remember that Github Pages agreement mentioned not doing something like this, I might be wrong though and be thinking of something else.

I don't understand where is the difference to hosting a blog via hugo or another static site generator in regards to Github Pages?

Will this lead to SEO issues due to content duplication?

I really don't know. You need to ask some SEO expert on this. However I especially use SEO friendly links on the static site (slugified titles).

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