Linux For Poets

Well, I redid the web site again. Ha! This one is done with the flat file CMS Datenstrom Yellow. I have been really enjoying the simplicity of it, just PHP, HTML and Markdown. And have been able to customize it pretty well, even though I am not a programmer. So that's fun.

If you are one of the few kind people following this blog on RSS, sorry for the new post overload!

I have restructured my web site. Again.

What I have been hoping for is a really simple web site, so I can just edit text/markdown files, sync them directly to my server and be done with it.

I am trying to use my computer as little as possible, and not to need it for writing. I find the computer rife with distractions, and want it to be as minimal as I can make it. This is why I do things like use the Supernote or Palm M500 to type and edit text documents.

This new web site is made using a Flat File CMS called HTMLy. I tried a bunch of Flat File CMSs, and found a lot of taglines shouting about how simple they were, followed by me spending hours trying to debug and customize them, or discover that they didn't have a functional RSS option. Very silly.

I tried one more, HTMLy, and was shocked to discover that it worked very quickly and well the first time and just did what I wanted. Amazing!

I had been using Publii, which is a fantastic piece of software. It is a GUI-based static site generator, where you create everything in the app and then hit the sync button to sync it to your FTP server.

This is not a criticism of Publii, which is really good software. This is about me trying to find a good workflow to maximize my focus ad minimize clutter. because I wound up with drafts in text files, and then would get tangled up about which version to edit as I was posting. What I wanted was a system where I would edit the files directly, in their file structure, and then just sync that to my FTP server. And that's what I now have!

If I write on the Supernote, I have the added step of syncing the Supernote to Dropbox, and then syncing the Dropbox folder to the FTP server. If I write on the Palm PDA, I have to sync those files from the SD card too. But that's not bad. Things stay simple and tidy. I am using FreeFileSync as a nice GUI piece of software to sync the local files to the FTP server. It works nicely.

All in all, pretty good!

I have again remade my web site using a new system. This time it is Publii (getpublii.com), and I am pretty excited about it for minimal web sites like this one. It's working well.

It is available as an .AppImage, .RPM or .DEB for Linux, and for other operating systems too. But Linux is the best one, obviously.

There are times when a database driven web site is needed and the right thing to use. Simple blog sites, however, do not need all that. Database sites like Wordpress (which I still use for more complex sites) are just too slow - both to develop and to use. And I don't think it should take image compression, content delivery networks and web site caching to deliver up the simple text in blog posts.

Publii is a static site CMS with a GUI. I have used Hugo, Jekyll and other static site generators, but call me a wuss - I like me a graphical user interface. Somehow with command line programs I always spend ages debugging one thing or another, and I'd rather focus on the writing I want to do.

The interface and setup is simple. You create blog posts, obviously, but also use posts as pages for use in the navigation menus. To make them into pages, you just add a link to them from the menu, and select to exclude them from the homepage, so they don't show up in the blog list.

There are paid and free themes, which seem quite customizable. I may look into building my own theme one of these days, but I'm going with the easy mode for now.

And when it's ready to go, you enter the server info, and sync it with your server - FTP, Github, or others.

There is the potential drawback of not having a web interface to access from multiple computers the way a Wordpress site does. But that doesn't bother me. I put my Publii site files in my Dropbox folder so I can use Publii on my home or studio computer, and that's all I need.

I love the speed and security of a static html web sites, and this system seems to be working well for me.