Blog Post: Getting Started With Static Site Generators

[st3phvee]

One of my goals with my blog is to make web building (and the IndieWeb space in general) feel a little more accessible to people who are used to creating all their written content on platforms, who don’t know much (or anything) about HTML/CSS/JS/etc. To that end, my latest blog post is a guide on how to get started with static site generators!


Getting Started With Static Site Generators

SSGs are old news to everyone posting here, I expect, but I figured I’d share it anyway.   Hopefully the post is clear and encouraging!

EDIT: WHOOPS, I totally thought I was posting this over in the Writing section of the forum! Apologies! Mods, please move as you see fit.

[fairyrune]

excellent blog post, it's structured very well! i am looking to install a proper blog on my personal site. with the variety of options out there it can be hard to know where to start, but this seems like a very nice foundation

i wonder, have you ever poked around with zoner? i've seen zoner/zonelet recommended before. it seems very popular, but i haven't really delved into these things yet (i'm just about treading water with htmlcss and general graphic design sense LOL). was there anything you felt like it could do better than jekyll, or that zoner/zonelet could have that jekyll does?

[st3phvee]

excellent blog post, it's structured very well! i am looking to install a proper blog on my personal site. with the variety of options out there it can be hard to know where to start, but this seems like a very nice foundation

i wonder, have you ever poked around with zoner? i've seen zoner/zonelet recommended before. it seems very popular, but i haven't really delved into these things yet (i'm just about treading water with htmlcss and general graphic design sense LOL). was there anything you felt like it could do better than jekyll, or that zoner/zonelet could have that jekyll does?

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the post.

I haven't used Zoner or Zonelets. Of the two, Zoner looks significantly better -- mainly because you can write your blog posts in Markdown and aren't forced to write in HTML. Writing in HTML is fine for shorter blog posts, but visually-speaking, Markdown is a much cleaner alternative if you're writing longer-form stuff. Zoner isn't maintained anymore, though, and hasn't been updated since 2024... I'd be very reluctant to use an application that isn't being actively maintained by the developer. And I personally wouldn't use Zonelets at all -- too many workflow/feature limitations for my liking.

I think if you can get Jekyll up and running on your computer, it would be the superior option.

[nipchip]

YIPPEE ANOTHER JEKYLL USER

Good post, I enjoyed reading it! I appreciate the point of being able to hop right into editing with a pre-built theme, can get right into adding content without needing to add more HTML and CSS immediately is nice. And good documention, an absolute must.

Love your blog btw, and I did indeed boop the cat.

[st3phvee]

YIPPEE ANOTHER JEKYLL USER

Good post, I enjoyed reading it! I appreciate the point of being able to hop right into editing with a pre-built theme, can get right into adding content without needing to add more HTML and CSS immediately is nice. And good documention, an absolute must.

Love your blog btw, and I did indeed boop the cat.

Isn't Jekyll great?! I wish I'd known about it years ago. I shudder when I think about how much money I wasted a few years back on hosting a needlessly bloated WordPress blog, when Jekyll is all I've ever needed.

Thanks for reading the post, and thanks for booping the cat, haha. I boop him IRL all the time, and it is delightful to know that he's getting digital boops from strangers as well.