| layout | title | summary |
|---|---|---|
post |
Static website for the win |
GitHub Pages as potential win for Apereo beyond blogging. |
- "+1" for Apereo adoption of GitHub Pages for this website
- I'm hopeful for applying this approach beyond blogging
- Static site generators have lots of advantages. Those advantages align with Apereo values and realities.
- Call to action to use GitHub Pages more and better and thereby make Apereo websites better.
I'm really excited and supportive about Apereo's adopting GitHub Pages for this website, and I'm hopeful for the potential in using it for more than just a blog.
Not only do I concur that this is a good idea:
RIKER EMBED
(Which is to say, "+1", in Apache parlance.)
Static site generators have tremendous advantages, and tremendous advantages aligned with Apereo values and operations.
- Driving the website by a public Git repo improves transparency. It means anyone can inspect the content and history of the site to understand just what is being said and the history of saying it.
- Driving the website by a public GitHub repo improves openness. It means anyone can propose a change.
- Driving the website by a public GitHub repo improves meritocracy. It means when anyone proposes a change that proposed change can be publicly evaluated on its merits. GitHub Pull Requests and their review features are a beautiful thing.
- Driving the website by a public GitHub repo improves collaboration. It means anyone can fork the repo if necessary and collaborate with anyone they like in any branches they need.
- Driving the website by a public GitHub repo better enables (much) better tools. Programmers edit text files. A website that is fundamentally text files as content is more amenable to programmers and technically minded people doing great things efficiently.
grepand its kin are beautiful and powerful. As is your text editor of choice. - Driving the website by an open and openly configured static site generator enables (much) better tools. To the extent necessary, programmers can collaborate not just on the content but also on the "program" that generates the website from the content -- the CSS, the templating, all the way through the free and open source static site generator framework itself.
- GitHub Pages is much better aligned with affordable and sustainable Apereo operations practices. Apereo is good at some things; running servers in general and dynamic database-backed websites specifically is a challenge. GitHub Pages websites don't fail because the database is down - there is no database. GitHub Pages websites are also free as in cheapness, which lines up well with Apereo funding levels.
- Static site generators enable higher quality results. It's easier for web devleopers to collaborate on making a website much sharper, much snappier, much better when using sharper tools.
Better is better. Make things better, and then make things better again. Repeat.
I believe that static site generator approaches will beat database-backed-web-sites (WordPress, Drupal, even my beloved Ghost) more often than not.
Apereo projects are already voting with their feet. OAE has its own GitHub Pages driven website . That feels more awesome to me than does its pages within apereo.org.
The next step is to do more of that. To keep making Apereo content better. And then to repeat.
I hope that walk will be a walk out of database-backed website solutions and into static site generator solutions, for the better productivity, quality, openness, transparency, and sustainability of Apereo website delivery.