Opinions on site generators (carrd, hugo, etc.)

[Sorcer]

I see a lot of people on social media who just use something like Carrd or StrawPage to make a simple companion page to their profile, and I think there's no shame in that. They can be cute! Before I decided to go into Neocities, I wanted to take that route, but none of the Carrds I ever made saved properly for some reason. At this point, however, I see how many more possibilities open up when you code your own site and run it as more of its own thing, even if I still haven't fully wrapped my head around how to do it myself. Again, no shame on those who don't feel the need to make something more complicated than a generator/builder would allow, we all engage with the web in our own ways.

[rhenn]

I personally use Hugo to build my site - I wouldn't put SSGs on the same level of Carrd/others for being template-driven though. I built my site template from scratch rather than using one from their template library; I like being able to build little modular snippets and put them together :> You can also make different css and 'template' files for different parts of your site, so there's still a lot of room for creativity!

I also don't really like fiddling with javascript lol so it simplifies things when I'm e.g. keeping my navbar consistent. I like seeing purely handcrafted sites but personally I get overwhelmed when my projects get too big

I think Carrd is probably good for things like artist portfolios & sharing social media links; it's good for people who don't want to do any coding but want to provide that kind of information.

[Semper]

I think SSG sites are really neat! They are among my favourite ones to visit, even though I don't personally feel inclined to build my site using a SSG. I'm just a weirdo that I enjoys tedium and continually touching and tweaking the code in my site. I like putting on a long video essay or a podcast on a quiet evening and do some housekeeping.

I like how responsive and clear a lot of SSG personal websites are and I have seen people do some really neat things with those generators. I don't think anyone has tried to gatekeep SSGs from the Web Revival or IndieWeb communities, at least I haven't witnessed it. I think if anyone has it's a very silly stance to take. The same goes for gatekeeping carrd or drag and drop site builders. I think most powerful aspect of having your own website is if you have had a hand in making it unique (even with templates), if what is shared on it is not dependant on any particular platform's social feed for attracting attention, and the most important (which I understand not everyone can manage) is having your own custom URL. This can be achieved even with a SSG.

Here are some SSG personal sites that I really like

Lost Letters

Frills

Nenrikido

There's also a webring for SSGs hosted on Neocities

NeoSSG

I would say that SSGs are a good bridge for the gap between drag and drop builders like Weebly and Squarespace and hand coding one's own site. We should definitely embrace tools that make it easier for people to have more control over their experiences on the internet.

[Capybara]

I hate Carrd and never understood it, but I don't see an issue with WYSIWYG editors and would like to try one sometime. When Geocities died, I had sites on Freewebs for awhile because I found the drag-and-drop way of site building easier to understand, but I don't know what free host does that besides Wix (which is ethically iffy and uses an ugly watermark to boot).

(I thought SSGs were different though? Every site I've seen that uses a SSG made the base layout themselves, so it's nothing like Carrd or anything.)

[acidicAlchemist]

i don’t have much to add that someone else hasn’t said, but as someone that was a carrd/rentry maker before making my site [i actually started learning coding in the first place because i got sick of carrd’s limitations lol], they don’t really help with the problem of the modern web feeling same-y. to be honest, i feel like template based sites like carrds, rentrys, and straw.pages aren’t really authentic sites in the same way a hand-coded site is.

like, they’re a conventient tool for a personal introduction page, but what use do they have outside of that? either all the features outside of the most basic are paywalled, or nonexistent. i understand they make making a website more accessible, but with so many resources to learn coding and so many free domain hosts, is it really worth it to sacrifice all that creative freedom for a bit more convenience?

[shapezncolourz]

i think they're... fine? i harbour no ill will to anyone who does use these - i used to have a carrd before moving to neocities myself - but i have points that pretty much everyone else has already brought up.

they do more for making the internet feel a little more diverse than most sites nowadays, but they all still feel a bit too similar. i find that they have a lot of limitations too, there's only so much you can make with them - once i learned html/css and coded my own site, i never looked back on carrd.

if you only want to make something small such as a profile, a hub of links, or a commissions sheet, then i think using a site generator is great for that purpose! if you want to make a full-on website, however, you may want to look into hand-coding.

(i only have experience with carrd btw! i imagine some of these other site builders work very differently and you can indeed build a full site using them LOL)

[candycanearter07]

im not fond of them persay but i’ve used them in the past. mostly because my neocities is still a huge wip so i’ve used carrd before as a temporary replacement.

i've mostly used things like google sites for school, and never really enjoyed it.. it felt way too "corporate", even with the custom images and such. i just don't like really flat colors and almost no embed control and no way to add my own scripts (even if i sucked at js back then).

I have a lot of respect for a site that creates with pure code, but if it's not possible there's no shame 

yeah! i might not like it but like others have said, it's a good "entry level site" tool. it would be nice if the platforms could have some way to slowly introduce html to the user, so it's not a massive jump from those to hand crafted.

[cmdr_nova]

as someone who's been hardcoding for forever, i decided to use jekyll not because i was tired of doing that, but because i needed the backend that would let me use {{ includes }} so that i could continue hardcoding, and maintain a blog with pagination, and also not have to update 30 pages whenever i adjust a link lol

[lime360]

as someone who's been hardcoding for forever, i decided to use jekyll not because i was tired of doing that, but because i needed the backend that would let me use {{ includes }} so that i could continue hardcoding, and maintain a blog with pagination, and also not have to update 30 pages whenever i adjust a link lol

i've used jekyll when my site used to be on neocities, but then i've decided to move to eleventy because i actually like that feature with adding npm stuff to the site

i still use jekyll for my web archival site tho

[creaturefeature]

I´m currently using Astro as a static generator for gaming review blog, its is kinda useful specially if im gonna post a lot there. saves me the time to have to manually coded the pages.  That being said you still need to learned coding even if you´re using a premade template so you could alter to fit your needs.

My neocities website is still manually coded. I´m wondering if should try to convert to an astro site to.

[JINSBEK]

It depends on the use-case. Carrd was originally marketed and designed to offer an “attractive online business card”, and at that, it excels. I’m not interested in other people’s online business cards, and the non-entrepreneurs who use Carrd typically don’t write things I’m interested in reading. Largely, I’ve seen amateurs use it as an extended Twitter profile, or just a very quick way to create a portfolio (which I tend not to be interested in either way). Somehow you can finagle multipage websites in Carrd (I’ve done so in the past), but it’s not ideal, and again, most people using Carrd don’t have pages of writing to publish, anyway.

It’s like asking me what opinion I have on the programming language a game developer’s chosen to use to build their game. I’m not gonna care that it’s Rust or Python. The end-user cares less for how something works, and more that it does work (not catching on fire, not very slow or buggy, not eating up all available memory, etc.).

[candycanearter07]

It depends on the use-case. Carrd was originally marketed and designed to offer an “attractive online business card”, and at that, it excels. I’m not interested in other people’s online business cards, and the non-entrepreneurs who use Carrd typically don’t write things I’m interested in reading. Largely, I’ve seen amateurs use it as an extended Twitter profile, or just a very quick way to create a portfolio (which I tend not to be interested in either way). Somehow you can finagle multipage websites in Carrd (I’ve done so in the past), but it’s not ideal, and again, most people using Carrd don’t have pages of writing to publish, anyway.

It’s like asking me what opinion I have on the programming language a game developer’s chosen to use to build their game. I’m not gonna care that it’s Rust or Python. The end-user cares less for how something works, and more that it does work (not catching on fire, not very slow or buggy, not eating up all available memory, etc.).

Yeah, caard just seems like a way to link all your socials and stuff easily without coding it.

Also, that second point has absolutely been proven in the real world, with the indie GOTY being written in fking LUA. also fnf and haxeflixel if you want to count that.

[PurpleHello98]

I used to absolutely hate carrd and anything to do with them when I first quit social media, etc., because I was so done with social media and anything resembling it. But I've honestly taken a more positive view to it and similar sites recently. Whilst I don't like carrd's limitations (everything being one page with different sections shown and hidden for one) I think it is a useful way for people to express themselves somewhat and at the very least not be entirely concentrated on social media. I've even seen some good-looking carrds in my day! People can get pretty creative with them, even if many of them can look samey--some people might even argue that a lot of Web revival sites have the same aesthetic. And they can even be a stepping stone away from social media, and in my opinion the less people on social media, the better for society.

...and also not have to update 30 pages whenever i adjust a link lol

Honestly, that's why I started using frames! I loooove frames :) take that, w3c!

[Gizmo]

I personally hand-code everything on my site since I consider it as much a learning tool to get a handle on HTML / CSS as it is a vehicle for personal expression (though I still copy and paste for eg new blog entries); but I don't have anything against WYSIWYG editors at all. It's perfectly reasonable to want to skip wrangling with CSS divs and focus on the actual content, which Carrd / WordPress / Wix are very effective at.

[Aarix]

I agree that there's nothing wrong with it. The decision whether to hand-code one's own website or not comes down one what one's purpose for having a website is in the first place. If my goal is to get some exercise and fresh air, then I should go for a little jog. On the other hand, if my goal is to get efficiently from A to B, it would be a lot more sensible for me to hop in my car and drive there rather than to go by foot.

My own website is made by hand because design itself is an important aspect of self-expression for me... I take a lot of pleasure in puzzling out designs and code--for me, the "purpose" of my website, if there is any, is the enjoyment I get from messing around with these things, iterating and improving upon them, and figuring out how best to communicate my ideas and present my creations to potential visitors. If your reason for having a website is simply to collate your thoughts, writing, creations, etc, and share them with others then there's no reason you "have to" code it by hand. If the rigamarole itself is not the motivation, then going to all this extra effort would become a chore rather than a pleasure. And your hobby shouldn't be a chore!

There's no valor inherent to doing anything the hard way. Any shortcut which does not undermine your purpose for doing a thing can and should be taken without shame. Be honest with yourself about your goals and motivations, and you can't go wrong!