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Comment by inthewoods | Hacker News Reader

This post spoke to me because I'm in the middle of an interesting decision - for our public/marketing website, should we go with Wordpress (something a lot of people know, etc) or a static site generator (fill in your favorite - Harp, Docpad, etc.)? The argument for going with the static site is that we'll have a much faster site (it will be static) that will likely be easier to customize (we don't need a lot of what Wordpress offers) but the potential downside is that most developers don't know the static tools so if I hire someone new, I'm likely training them. Now, I don't think training will be that hard if you get someone with a decent background, but you get the idea.

What would you choose? Safe and stable Wordpress with more customization effort, or the static site generator idea with less installed based of developers?

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Go with WordPress. All the advantages you listed, plus you can always use a caching plugin to generate static files. I think WP SuperCache is the standard. If you get to the point where that combo is too slow to handle all the traffic you're getting, you've officially found a Good Problem To Have™.

Static sites are much more robust under stress than dynamic ones. To get that robustness back for a dynamic site, you have to add at least one layer of complexity, namely caching. A dynamic site generator like WordPress also exposes a much larger attack surface for security exploits. So from a sysadmin perspective, a static site is undeniably better.

However, expect some resistance from your content authors. "You mean I have to use Git and the command line? I can't just paste into a text box on a web page, like in every well-designed system since about 2000?" Luckily, there's at least one solution for that: http://prose.io/

I found the documentation on Prose a little terse - can it support markup site tools other than Jekyll?

I think static site generators aren't really "new" technology. Originally, the whole web was based on serving static pages. In a sense, it's the oldest web tech there is. And you're simplifying your stack on the deployment platform.

But Wordpress does add a whole bunch of features that you might need.

Wordpress, safe, and stable. Wow. Never heard this together.

You can have safe and stable Wordpress, you just can't have it cheap:

http://wpengine.com/

( patio11 post about WPEngine - http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/02/09/why-i-dont-host-my-own-b... )

Safe meaning a safe choice - not commenting on the safety of the software although I've never had an issue personally.

Stable - yes, for me, Wordpress has been stable.

My issue is with complexity that the tool adds without a lot of upside.

I can't see how learning to use a static site generator could be difficult. Wouldn't people mostly just be editing the content and re-generating the pages, etc?

I don't think it's difficult, but there aren't the same number of people that know Wordpress. For content editors, I don't think it matters - but for programmers, I can find people that know Wordpress. Finding someone that knows a given static site generator is much harder.

> Finding someone that knows a given static site generator is much harder.

Sure, but what exactly is there to know about it? :) -How to get it to generate a static site from a content directory?

Any good static site generator can be learned in an hour.

You shouldn't search only for people who already know the static site generator you plan to use: any good developer that uses the CLI will have no problem using it.

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