Makesite.py – Simple, lightweight, and magic-free static site/blog generator

In my opinion, the worst problem is the lack of a standard way to handle dependencies. I recently had a hard time deploying a small Python project over a few heterogeneous Linux machines.

For example, this "simple, lightweight" program has dependencies, as one can see in its .travis.yaml file. That's why the readme has the command `pip install commonmark` (plus more dependencies for dev). But, wait, doesn't `pip` install as root in /usr/local/ by default? (BTW, the documentation of `pip install` is mute on the subject.) So I should use pipenv, but last time I tried it was broken and the ticket had low activity. So virtualenv + pip, but it's a mess since I like using many terminals. I've heard about poetry, but that's not standard at all...

Or go to the dark side and install Wordpress.

It’s actually not as bad as I thought it would be. I modified one of the twenty-x themes that come with it and installed a few plugins to make a decent personal site. It took less time that it would have to create anything with remotely similar functionality.

I run it off a single vps that has no other purpose. If it gets hacked, nothing of value is lost. I can revoke the api keys for the external services I use and restore to a new server from my backups.

I would have considered if this project was using Node.js instead Python as well.

> I think the Java/Go/Rust model where all dependencies are included in the binary is the way to go.

This is how triple scripts are designed[1] to work.

One proof-of-concept just so happens to be a minimalist static site generator called triickl[2]. You can drop it onto (virtually) any machine, double click, and point it at a source directory for your site—subject to the expectation that it follows a certain jekyll-like structure—and then you're off to the races. I'm using it as the build step for the triplescripts.org home page itself and my personal site.

1. https://triplescripts.org/format#self-contained

1. https://releases.triplescripts.org/triickl/

Have you tried writing a web app in Java/Go/Rust vs. Python in the past year?

You raise a fair general point about Python dependencies, but that issue is usually related to poorly considered use of third-party dependencies or the need to distribute binaries and leverage C bindings.

But here we have exactly the kind of project that should be written in Python, forked and cloned by you, then tweaked and maintained as if you wrote it yourself. From a brief glance through the code, and taking the submission title at face value, this project is a refreshingly appropriate use of the right language. I offer this as someone who writes Python and Go, generally preferring Go anywhere possible.

I plan to poke around some more in this repo to see if I can easily replace my use of Hugo with this, since I use only a tiny fraction of the features in Hugo and have found it challenging to hack on it as a low-priority weekend project.

For turning personal blog posts from markdown to HTML with some general convenience functions around maintaining the front-matter and templates, I can’t think of something more appropriate than a Python script sitting inside your blog directory with all of its dependencies except the interpreter itself checked in with your templates and content.

I’ll by Go or Rust, but Java? I have spent too much time fixing java software recently.. it’s dependencies are a complete pain.

You can create and distribute all-in-one Python executables with PyInstaller.

I've used it in multistage Docker builds to produce very clean, minimal production images like what people commonly do in Go.

https://pyinstaller.readthedocs.io/en/stable/usage.html

Depends how it's setup. I remember reading something one time about how you can set it up where each individual build step is cached which would cut down on a lot of build time. So for instance, in this case it would only remind the sidebar.

I would guess that depends on whether the change affects the HTML. If it's only a CSS change, you could probably get away with redeploying the CSS file.

I can not answer for large sites (nor for makesite.py specifically), but in general to your scenario, yes, all pages would need to be regenerated. I guess you could think of it as a build server. But instead of building code for an app that you would be deploying, you are generating your content for your static site/blog. That being said, you could then create a build server optimized to generate your content, and/or try a static site generator whose forte is the build/generation process (I think hugo fans tend to highlight this feature for that platform?). Maybe instead of generating all content on your local machine, you could keep all your content on a beefier machine, and generate it from there - which could process stuff much faster, etc. Even still, it is probably unlikely that one would have to alter things like sidebars or footers that often, right? Also, worse case scenario, something tells me that even if needing to regenerate that many pages, i mean, would it be ok if it takes just a few minutes - probably not the end of the world, right? (I guess it depends on the timeliness of the single post or footer change that needs to wait for 100,000 pages to get regenerated, eh?) I hope my comments helped a little.

Yes changing the global template would involve regenerating all 100,000 pages in most static site generators. The only exception being those rare ones which offload template rendering to client side (there's a couple that I've seen). Still, some static site generators like Hugo, are built for bigger sites specifically by being able to generate massive amounts of pages very quickly. Even in your 100,000 page example a site probably would be completely rebuilt within a second or two.

It depends on how you do it but generally speaking, the break even point is “will I be generating pages faster than they are accessed?” Eg if I have a site like Wired.com with a long tail of old articles, it might be that by generating it, I refresh old articles 500x daily for the 500 new story creation and edits, even though the average old article gets less than one view per day.

Based on our experience (n=1) I would say, yes, it works best for small sites. We have a medium site with on the order of 1000s of pages. Jekyll has become a bit unwieldy to rebuild a full static version of the site (takes about 5 mins for a full rebuild). I would certainly say an order of magnitude higher we’d definitely want server side Wordpress or similar.

The alternative is to generate the page per request. So it depends on the read/write ratio.

It may require regenerating all pages, but depending on the generator that may not be particularly expensive - they may cache partial assets, so you replace part of the build asset and then the build is basically a bunch of cat-like calls, which tend to be extremely cheap.

The largest static site I've managed was only a couple thousand pages (2138 pages from the last build log), but the build time was around 8 seconds (8.1 from the last build log) with cached build assets.

I'd be happy using a static generator for most sites.

> Makesite.py is "sold" as an alternative to Jekyll for people who prefer Python.

That's a really strange argument to make. If you see the README, it mentions, "But then did you yearn to use something even simpler to generate your blog? Do you like Python? Perhaps the thought of writing your own static site generator crossed your mind but you thought it would be too much work? If you answered "yes" to these questions, then this project is for you."

Makesite.py is being presented as a do-it-yourself blogging solution with makesite.py serving as a good starting point to start hacking. It is very different from Jekyll. How does it make sense to mention Pelican which is, if anything, similar to Jekyll and not similar to Makesite.py?

I don't use Makesite.py but if you see the network graph [1], obviously there is an audience for this kind of tool. I see many more results of people using and modifying makesite.py here [2].

I think the appeal of a tool like Makesite.py is that you can make it what you want [3]. It is about a 100 lines of code and written very neatly. Instead of wading through documentation and configuration to figure how to get Jekyll or Pelican running, you can make your own Jekyll or Pelican. I can see why many individualist programmers would like such a thing.

[1] https://github.com/sunainapai/makesite/network

[2] https://github.com/search?q=%22makesite.py%22&type=Code

[3] https://github.com/tuchandra/tuchandra.github.io/blob/master...