RE: The Static Site Paradox

I think Loris Cro's first mistake is in assuming normal people have websites.

I don't see the same sort of static site paradox that Loris Cro sees.

He asks why "normal users" don't have static websites and why professionals aren't using complex content management systems (CMS). He observes that it's mainly professionals (techies) who have static websites and "normal users" using systems like WordPress.

This ties into Jason asking, If HTML and CSS are so simple, why haven't static sites reigned supreme?.

Here's how I see it:

  1. If you had a website in 1994, you were an outlier; most people didn't have internet access then. If you have a website in 2024, you're an outlier for a different reason; most people who post online are content with social media.
  2. Creating a web page and styli/ng with CSS is simple compared to all of the other shit you've got to do to build a website. There are thousands of personal websites on Neocities made by people who aren't necessarily techies, after all, and because Neocities doesn't give you a shell account all you can really do is HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images.

As Loris Cro observed, if you're not going to "spin up a WordPress blog", there's a lot of other shit you've got to do if you want other people to see your HTML and CSS:

  1. Buy a domain
  2. Find a hosting platform
  3. Configure DNS
  4. Find an SSG (or handcraft everything yourself)
  5. Learn how to setup a deployment pipeline

However, some of this is bullshit. First, you don't buy a domain. You can't do that; you can only lease a domain — for a year at a time by default — though if you've got the cash you can register a domain for up to a decade. Next, if you're using a reasonable webhost like Dreamhost, you probably don't have to deal with DNS if your host also acts as a domain registrar unless something has gone wrong. My host, Nearly Free Speech, does make me review DNS config, but NFS is for people who speak UNIX.

Also, what's this bullshit about deployment pipelines? I think Loris Cro is drawing too many parallels from his work on the Zig programming language. Complex software projects may need deployment pipelines, but I never saw the point of spinning up a virtual machine on somebody else's server just to build my damn website; I've got a perfectly good computer running Slackware right here. Personal websites consisting of a few pages and some media should be deployable with a tool like Cyberduck, and I manage just fine with rsync over ssh.

Now, let's talk about static site generators. I don't know why Loris Cro would even think that a "normal person" would use one, unless he's talking about stuff like Blot, which takes a folder full of files and turns it into a website for you (and also provides hosting for a fee). I've tried a few static site generators myself, starting with Jekyll. When Tom Preston-Warner created Jekyll in 2008, he wasn't thinking of "normal users". He was scratching his own itch; he wanted to "blog like a hacker". He had specific, complex requirements and he implemented them using tech with which he was familiar.

A "normal person" isn't going to fuck around with installing Ruby gems, let alone setting up a Ruby environment, just to try blogging if somebody like me has managed to persuade them that they should have their own website instead of putting up with Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, or Mastodon. Furthermore, if I wanted to persuade somebody who doesn't dick around with computers for a living that they should have their own website, I'd recommend something like omg.lol and weblog.lol, Pika, write.as, or even Bear Blog. If I was really smart, I'd figure out how to get people to pay me to build and update their personal websites for them instead of being the guy they call because they're seeing an error message that only makes sense to developers — and sometimes only to the developer who wrote whatever software they're trying to use.

As for spinning up a WordPress blog, I hope to Arioch that Loris Cro is talking about creating an account on wordpress.com. Because I've tried to spin up a self-hosted WordPress instance. It is not a happy fun time. You need to be your own sysadmin if you're going to do that. Hell, you still need to be your own sysadmin if you're on Dreamhost and you use their "one click install", because you've still got to deal with updates for WordPress and any plugins you use. Shit like this is why, like Karl Bartel, I build my website with a makefile.

Of course, building website with a makefile also takes me far from "normal person" territory, but I was well away from the border of normalcy before I bought my first computer, let alone before I learned to speak UNIX.

I've come to think that if we want "normal people" to have their own websites, then "normal people" need to understand how computers and the internet work. Being able to use a few applications on a PC or a smartphone isn't going to cut it. As elitist as this sounds, I think we shouldn't call people computer literate unless they can cope with a UNIX shell, the way secretaries at Bell Labs in the 1970s did when composing memoranda in ed and typesetting them with troff macros. I want everybody to have a basic understanding of how computers work, just as I want everybody to be able to read. The knowledge I possess should not be the exclusive preserve of a priesthood that lords it over the general public, as if techies like me were priests of the Temples of Syrinx.

Maybe I'm wrong to think that HTML and CSS are themselves relatively simple, and that all the rest of the rigamarole that running your own website entails is the hard part. If it seems easy for me, it's because I'm used to it. It helps that I grew up Catholic and have therefore learned to find pleasure in pain. Running my own website is both more creative than playing Dark Souls and cheaper and less likely to upset my wife than seeing a dominatrix.