Hacker News Reader

Comment by adriangrigore | Hacker News Reader

Web site building complexity, for now I started with a simple static site generator https://mkws.sh/. Right now, I'm not using any package manager, no config files, only one language for templates (sh), and obviously HTML, CSS, Js. I eventually plan to develop a simple CMS based on the same ideas. Ideas and code are welcome!

View on HN

Hey there, how can I download/install this? I've been meaning to but I couldn't find another way besides https://mkws.sh/mkws@4.0.11.tgz which currently throws a 404 not found error. Any ideas?

> (sh), and obviously HTML, CSS, Js

Cut out the sh dependency and just use the "obvious" tech; make the site capable of generating itself, without reliance on any other tools.

What do you suggest for templating?

ES6 backtick strings.

I believe you misunderstand, I'd rather distance myself from the NodeJs ecosystem and use standard UNIX tools for developing web sites. I believe sh is great as a templating language.

I didn't say anything about NodeJS. (In fact, that would be adding a different dependency, not reducing the count by one.)

So how would you interpret the ES6 backtick strings?

The "obvious" way. (The same runtime that you're planning to use for the JS you mentioned in your original comment. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28349504>)

And do the generation on the client side?

If by "client side" you mean in the web browser of you, the author of a new piece of content, then yes—a site that is "capable of generating itself". (If you mean templates that are evaluated in the browser of every site visitor every time they refresh the page, then no.)

Ah, yeah, finally got your "capable of generating itself" idea. Pretty cool, interesting to experiment on it. I guess it would be something like a site that downloads itself also.

But then you would have a Js dependency.

Have a look at stuff like Netlify CMS, or any of the already existing website builders like WIX or Weebly or squarespace Etc.

Any headless CMS would work well my `mkws`, my idea is to build a smaller, simpler Wordpress that also comes with a tiny webserver, 0 config, no database, content stored as plain text files, just download and run. https://getkirby.com/ is closer in concept, but without the PHP dependency.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com