Re: Project of Interest => Jekyll + Dynamic processing integration + Git(hubs)Pages => pharo in the middle

This comes really on time for me, I decided to rewrite to small sites I have using Jekyll, and as read all their tutorials I thought even of having a Jekyllst variation, that uses the Jekyll directories and other conventions, but uses Smalltalk as its engine. Of course this is far reached given my real availability these days, that's lower than usual.

However I'd like to be part of conversations around this, and eventually contribute to it, because I already started playing with Jekyll (and Gatsby as well).

Regards,

Esteban A. Maringolo

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 10:15 AM Cédrick Béler <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi there, 

This post is just to talk about one side project I’m exploring and interested in from a long time. I think it may interest other people here.

I’d like to have powerful (static based) web site so hosting is really cheap (even free) and hassle free. I’ve my own server for years, it is cheap and simple but, of course, it needs some maintenance (linux update, nginx scripts, …) even if tools are the simplest I’ve found.

Recently thanks to student projects ;-), I found some time to learn what I find is a wonderful solution. This solution is to use GitHub DSCM, GitHub Pages and Jekyll (a ruby static site generator that is natively integrated) all together.

https://jekyllrb.com 

The beauty is that you can edit the site straight on GitHub. We get the power of version system and hosting for free… 

It literally is a CMS and the cheapest and reliable that I know of (grav might be another option).

Of course, there are some « dynamic » content possibilities too (otherwise GitHub Pages is enough)

- blog posts are natively generated through new files according to a name convention.

- there are plugins too (but you have to watch for compatibility in GitHub).

Dealing with forms and comments is possible

- solutions that are hosted on a third-party. Solution like Discus or formspree, … (that’s a NO GO to me)

- web service integration that you can host (note that form spree is on GitHub too https://github.com/formspree/formspree)

This last point is where I’d like Pharo (Zinc, Iceberg) to be integrated. Again we could imagine a web service system based on Zinc. I could manage form submissions that way and everything I’d like but it may end up complex. Do I need a database ? Do I need to store information and therefore manage the underlying architecture. If it crash, I want only the endpoint to be not available but the whole site still working.

An in between elegant solution os to use git for what it’s good at (versioning collaboratively through PR, and also reliable hosting in classic platforms). 

The idea is to use the PR mechanisms to submit stuff like blog comments (note that you have a free moderation system). 

This is actually not limited to comments but all kinds of possible interaction…

This way is (to me) better in terms of infrastructure management. Such a service also needs to be available (and maintained) but this is a very minimalist machinery (hanling POST request service only - no real content management as deferred to github). And again, a fail safe version (for the last version of the generated pages).

Staticman (https://staticman.net) is a nice node application that allows to do this. It’s possible to host the service too.

<GraphiqueCollé-1.png>

I can use this node app of course, but I believe we could have quite easily such an application in Pharo with Zinc. 

I also wonder if we could use Iceberg to deal with this information straight in a pharo image (that’d be cherry on the cake). 

The super cherry of the cake would be pharo core and lib documentation, demos (you can have one gihub page by organization and/or users - in paid plans, you can have more for private stuff)… One place, one process to contribute, either for code or documentation.

Anyway, I have no real question except than asking for feedback and also to know if some people are interested in such project. 

Cheers,

Cédrick

nb: my hidden goal is to provide web site for people, unipersonal and small organizations. So you know, they pay for the service of creation, but then they own it and can do whatever they like. Of course we can also offer paid services like managing dynamic information content. More than comments, I’d like to be able to deal with stuff like orders, facturation, even meeting planning through ics versioned files, etc. 

This really is something I’d like to be able to provide soon (less than 1 yr time - simplest web site with contact form and comments at least). It might become something more serious the future...



Hi Esteban,

This comes really on time for me, I decided to rewrite to small sites I have using Jekyll, and as read all their tutorials I thought even of having a Jekyllst variation, that uses the Jekyll directories and other conventions, but uses Smalltalk as its engine. Of course this is far reached given my real availability these days, that's lower than usual.

Cool anyway if that’s something that interest you too. What do you think of https://gohugo.io ?

Themes are pretty cool https://themes.gohugo.io 

However I'd like to be part of conversations around this, and eventually contribute to it, because I already started playing with Jekyll (and Gatsby as well).

Perfect :)

This is not urgent but I need to put 2 websites online for September (simple ones). For now, I’m trying around. Summer will be perfect for me to work on such project.

Cheers,

Cédrick

Regards,

Esteban A. Maringolo

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 10:15 AM Cédrick Béler <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi there, 

This post is just to talk about one side project I’m exploring and interested in from a long time. I think it may interest other people here.

I’d like to have powerful (static based) web site so hosting is really cheap (even free) and hassle free. I’ve my own server for years, it is cheap and simple but, of course, it needs some maintenance (linux update, nginx scripts, …) even if tools are the simplest I’ve found.

Recently thanks to student projects ;-), I found some time to learn what I find is a wonderful solution. This solution is to use GitHub DSCM, GitHub Pages and Jekyll (a ruby static site generator that is natively integrated) all together.

https://jekyllrb.com 

The beauty is that you can edit the site straight on GitHub. We get the power of version system and hosting for free… 

It literally is a CMS and the cheapest and reliable that I know of (grav might be another option).

Of course, there are some « dynamic » content possibilities too (otherwise GitHub Pages is enough)

- blog posts are natively generated through new files according to a name convention.

- there are plugins too (but you have to watch for compatibility in GitHub).

Dealing with forms and comments is possible

- solutions that are hosted on a third-party. Solution like Discus or formspree, … (that’s a NO GO to me)

- web service integration that you can host (note that form spree is on GitHub too https://github.com/formspree/formspree)

This last point is where I’d like Pharo (Zinc, Iceberg) to be integrated. Again we could imagine a web service system based on Zinc. I could manage form submissions that way and everything I’d like but it may end up complex. Do I need a database ? Do I need to store information and therefore manage the underlying architecture. If it crash, I want only the endpoint to be not available but the whole site still working.

An in between elegant solution os to use git for what it’s good at (versioning collaboratively through PR, and also reliable hosting in classic platforms). 

The idea is to use the PR mechanisms to submit stuff like blog comments (note that you have a free moderation system). 

This is actually not limited to comments but all kinds of possible interaction…

This way is (to me) better in terms of infrastructure management. Such a service also needs to be available (and maintained) but this is a very minimalist machinery (hanling POST request service only - no real content management as deferred to github). And again, a fail safe version (for the last version of the generated pages).

Staticman (https://staticman.net) is a nice node application that allows to do this. It’s possible to host the service too.

<GraphiqueCollé-1.png>

I can use this node app of course, but I believe we could have quite easily such an application in Pharo with Zinc. 

I also wonder if we could use Iceberg to deal with this information straight in a pharo image (that’d be cherry on the cake). 

The super cherry of the cake would be pharo core and lib documentation, demos (you can have one gihub page by organization and/or users - in paid plans, you can have more for private stuff)… One place, one process to contribute, either for code or documentation.

Anyway, I have no real question except than asking for feedback and also to know if some people are interested in such project. 

Cheers,

Cédrick

nb: my hidden goal is to provide web site for people, unipersonal and small organizations. So you know, they pay for the service of creation, but then they own it and can do whatever they like. Of course we can also offer paid services like managing dynamic information content. More than comments, I’d like to be able to deal with stuff like orders, facturation, even meeting planning through ics versioned files, etc. 

This really is something I’d like to be able to provide soon (less than 1 yr time - simplest web site with contact form and comments at least). It might become something more serious the future...

On May 26, 2020, at 12:54 PM, Tim Mackinnon <[hidden email]> wrote:

Combine this with the new headless image and it should easily plug into netlify .

Tim

On 23 May 2020, at 21:41, Cédrick Béler <[hidden email]> wrote:



Hi Esteban,

This comes really on time for me, I decided to rewrite to small sites I have using Jekyll, and as read all their tutorials I thought even of having a Jekyllst variation, that uses the Jekyll directories and other conventions, but uses Smalltalk as its engine. Of course this is far reached given my real availability these days, that's lower than usual.

Cool anyway if that’s something that interest you too. What do you think of https://gohugo.io ?

Themes are pretty cool https://themes.gohugo.io 

However I'd like to be part of conversations around this, and eventually contribute to it, because I already started playing with Jekyll (and Gatsby as well).

Perfect :)

This is not urgent but I need to put 2 websites online for September (simple ones). For now, I’m trying around. Summer will be perfect for me to work on such project.

Cheers,

Cédrick

Regards,

Esteban A. Maringolo

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 10:15 AM Cédrick Béler <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi there, 

This post is just to talk about one side project I’m exploring and interested in from a long time. I think it may interest other people here.

I’d like to have powerful (static based) web site so hosting is really cheap (even free) and hassle free. I’ve my own server for years, it is cheap and simple but, of course, it needs some maintenance (linux update, nginx scripts, …) even if tools are the simplest I’ve found.

Recently thanks to student projects ;-), I found some time to learn what I find is a wonderful solution. This solution is to use GitHub DSCM, GitHub Pages and Jekyll (a ruby static site generator that is natively integrated) all together.

https://jekyllrb.com 

The beauty is that you can edit the site straight on GitHub. We get the power of version system and hosting for free… 

It literally is a CMS and the cheapest and reliable that I know of (grav might be another option).

Of course, there are some « dynamic » content possibilities too (otherwise GitHub Pages is enough)

- blog posts are natively generated through new files according to a name convention.

- there are plugins too (but you have to watch for compatibility in GitHub).

Dealing with forms and comments is possible

- solutions that are hosted on a third-party. Solution like Discus or formspree, … (that’s a NO GO to me)

- web service integration that you can host (note that form spree is on GitHub too https://github.com/formspree/formspree)

This last point is where I’d like Pharo (Zinc, Iceberg) to be integrated. Again we could imagine a web service system based on Zinc. I could manage form submissions that way and everything I’d like but it may end up complex. Do I need a database ? Do I need to store information and therefore manage the underlying architecture. If it crash, I want only the endpoint to be not available but the whole site still working.

An in between elegant solution os to use git for what it’s good at (versioning collaboratively through PR, and also reliable hosting in classic platforms). 

The idea is to use the PR mechanisms to submit stuff like blog comments (note that you have a free moderation system). 

This is actually not limited to comments but all kinds of possible interaction…

This way is (to me) better in terms of infrastructure management. Such a service also needs to be available (and maintained) but this is a very minimalist machinery (hanling POST request service only - no real content management as deferred to github). And again, a fail safe version (for the last version of the generated pages).

Staticman (https://staticman.net) is a nice node application that allows to do this. It’s possible to host the service too.

<GraphiqueCollé-1.png>

I can use this node app of course, but I believe we could have quite easily such an application in Pharo with Zinc. 

I also wonder if we could use Iceberg to deal with this information straight in a pharo image (that’d be cherry on the cake). 

The super cherry of the cake would be pharo core and lib documentation, demos (you can have one gihub page by organization and/or users - in paid plans, you can have more for private stuff)… One place, one process to contribute, either for code or documentation.

Anyway, I have no real question except than asking for feedback and also to know if some people are interested in such project. 

Cheers,

Cédrick

nb: my hidden goal is to provide web site for people, unipersonal and small organizations. So you know, they pay for the service of creation, but then they own it and can do whatever they like. Of course we can also offer paid services like managing dynamic information content. More than comments, I’d like to be able to deal with stuff like orders, facturation, even meeting planning through ics versioned files, etc. 

This really is something I’d like to be able to provide soon (less than 1 yr time - simplest web site with contact form and comments at least). It might become something more serious the future...



Hi - a bit late to reply on this one, but I did try Jekyl years ago, it was ok but over time frustrating to use and difficult to make the pipeline understandable ...

I looked at Hugo and a few others but ended up going with Metalsmith (a JS static generator). I liked the plugable pipeline model of it, but cursed the state of Js tools (a few years ago) .

I’ve been meaning for ages to reimplement it in Smalltalk with a nice oo composite pipeline model and an easy way to debug and visualise what is going when getting your template right.

Combine this with the new headless image and it should easily plug into netlify .

Tim

On 23 May 2020, at 21:41, Cédrick Béler <[hidden email]> wrote:



Hi Esteban,

This comes really on time for me, I decided to rewrite to small sites I have using Jekyll, and as read all their tutorials I thought even of having a Jekyllst variation, that uses the Jekyll directories and other conventions, but uses Smalltalk as its engine. Of course this is far reached given my real availability these days, that's lower than usual.

Cool anyway if that’s something that interest you too. What do you think of https://gohugo.io ?

Themes are pretty cool https://themes.gohugo.io 

However I'd like to be part of conversations around this, and eventually contribute to it, because I already started playing with Jekyll (and Gatsby as well).

Perfect :)

This is not urgent but I need to put 2 websites online for September (simple ones). For now, I’m trying around. Summer will be perfect for me to work on such project.

Cheers,

Cédrick

Regards,

Esteban A. Maringolo

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 10:15 AM Cédrick Béler <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi there, 

This post is just to talk about one side project I’m exploring and interested in from a long time. I think it may interest other people here.

I’d like to have powerful (static based) web site so hosting is really cheap (even free) and hassle free. I’ve my own server for years, it is cheap and simple but, of course, it needs some maintenance (linux update, nginx scripts, …) even if tools are the simplest I’ve found.

Recently thanks to student projects ;-), I found some time to learn what I find is a wonderful solution. This solution is to use GitHub DSCM, GitHub Pages and Jekyll (a ruby static site generator that is natively integrated) all together.

https://jekyllrb.com 

The beauty is that you can edit the site straight on GitHub. We get the power of version system and hosting for free… 

It literally is a CMS and the cheapest and reliable that I know of (grav might be another option).

Of course, there are some « dynamic » content possibilities too (otherwise GitHub Pages is enough)

- blog posts are natively generated through new files according to a name convention.

- there are plugins too (but you have to watch for compatibility in GitHub).

Dealing with forms and comments is possible

- solutions that are hosted on a third-party. Solution like Discus or formspree, … (that’s a NO GO to me)

- web service integration that you can host (note that form spree is on GitHub too https://github.com/formspree/formspree)

This last point is where I’d like Pharo (Zinc, Iceberg) to be integrated. Again we could imagine a web service system based on Zinc. I could manage form submissions that way and everything I’d like but it may end up complex. Do I need a database ? Do I need to store information and therefore manage the underlying architecture. If it crash, I want only the endpoint to be not available but the whole site still working.

An in between elegant solution os to use git for what it’s good at (versioning collaboratively through PR, and also reliable hosting in classic platforms). 

The idea is to use the PR mechanisms to submit stuff like blog comments (note that you have a free moderation system). 

This is actually not limited to comments but all kinds of possible interaction…

This way is (to me) better in terms of infrastructure management. Such a service also needs to be available (and maintained) but this is a very minimalist machinery (hanling POST request service only - no real content management as deferred to github). And again, a fail safe version (for the last version of the generated pages).

Staticman (https://staticman.net) is a nice node application that allows to do this. It’s possible to host the service too.

<GraphiqueCollé-1.png>

I can use this node app of course, but I believe we could have quite easily such an application in Pharo with Zinc. 

I also wonder if we could use Iceberg to deal with this information straight in a pharo image (that’d be cherry on the cake). 

The super cherry of the cake would be pharo core and lib documentation, demos (you can have one gihub page by organization and/or users - in paid plans, you can have more for private stuff)… One place, one process to contribute, either for code or documentation.

Anyway, I have no real question except than asking for feedback and also to know if some people are interested in such project. 

Cheers,

Cédrick

nb: my hidden goal is to provide web site for people, unipersonal and small organizations. So you know, they pay for the service of creation, but then they own it and can do whatever they like. Of course we can also offer paid services like managing dynamic information content. More than comments, I’d like to be able to deal with stuff like orders, facturation, even meeting planning through ics versioned files, etc. 

This really is something I’d like to be able to provide soon (less than 1 yr time - simplest web site with contact form and comments at least). It might become something more serious the future...

On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 3:59 AM Cédrick Béler <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi - a bit late to reply on this one, but I did try Jekyl years ago, it was ok but over time frustrating to use and difficult to make the pipeline understandable ...

I looked at Hugo and a few others but ended up going with Metalsmith (a JS static generator). I liked the plugable pipeline model of it, but cursed the state of Js tools (a few years ago) .

It seems indeed that Jekyll can become frustrating. I’m using Hugo right now. I didn’t know metalsmith...

I tried Jekyll and Gatsby.js, and albeit the latest is a mix of SSR
and SPA, I found some of their ideas in how to organize content to be
valuable, but I can't stand the tooling or the feeling of facing an
unneeded accidental complexity.

I’ve been meaning for ages to reimplement it in Smalltalk with a nice oo composite pipeline model and an easy way to debug and visualise what is going when getting your template right.

I’ve tried to restrain myself not to redo it in smalltalk but that would be great option. I don’t know the required effort though but I’ll be glad to be part of such project.

I spent the last weekend giving a try to that Gatbsy thing (nuxt.js
and vuepress are in the backlog too), and at 10PM on sunday I decided
to start coding something in Smalltalk, because it just feels better
to me.

I don't know how harder would it be, but that's a tool we currently
lack, the static-site generator. And we have support for different
templating, rendering canvas, and whatnot.

Combine this with the new headless image and it should easily plug into netlify .

Plus to netlify but also class export to servers. I thing Git(hubs) Pages are a nice option. In any cas, one nice pattern is to use git to store pages versions, and then you can replay on Pages / or on your own server / or on netlify.

When I think about netlify I don't think about an app (as in, an
executable) but as a simple static site, but if it possible to deploy
an app that is distributed and served by their CDN, then better!

I also wonder what would be possible with mini-image like Erik did.

I need to see more!
I don't know how independent a client image can be, how much you can
"pre-deploy" without needed to rehydrate the browser with server
changes, etc.
It's promising.

Regards!

I tried Jekyll and Gatsby.js, and albeit the latest is a mix of SSR
and SPA, I found some of their ideas in how to organize content to be
valuable, but I can't stand the tooling or the feeling of facing an
unneeded accidental complexity.

I’ve been meaning for ages to reimplement it in Smalltalk with a nice oo composite pipeline model and an easy way to debug and visualise what is going when getting your template right.

I’ve tried to restrain myself not to redo it in smalltalk but that would be great option. I don’t know the required effort though but I’ll be glad to be part of such project.

I spent the last weekend giving a try to that Gatbsy thing (nuxt.js
and vuepress are in the backlog too), and at 10PM on sunday I decided
to start coding something in Smalltalk, because it just feels better
to me.

I don't know how harder would it be, but that's a tool we currently
lack, the static-site generator. And we have support for different
templating, rendering canvas, and whatnot.

Combine this with the new headless image and it should easily plug into netlify .

Plus to netlify but also class export to servers. I thing Git(hubs) Pages are a nice option. In any cas, one nice pattern is to use git to store pages versions, and then you can replay on Pages / or on your own server / or on netlify.

When I think about netlify I don't think about an app (as in, an
executable) but as a simple static site, but if it possible to deploy
an app that is distributed and served by their CDN, then better!

I also wonder what would be possible with mini-image like Erik did.

I need to see more!
I don't know how independent a client image can be, how much you can
"pre-deploy" without needed to rehydrate the browser with server
changes, etc.
It's promising.

Regards!

Guile, what is its status ? Can you give some information (the web site is in latin ;) )

I’ll try it.

Cheers,

Cédrick

Le 27 mai 2020 à 14:00, [hidden email] a écrit :

There is already a static website generator in Pharo: https://github.com/guillep/ecstatic

Maybe you should start from that?

It would be great.

Regards

Sent from my iPhone

On 27 May 2020, at 19:49, Esteban Maringolo <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 3:59 AM Cédrick Béler <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi - a bit late to reply on this one, but I did try Jekyl years ago, it was ok but over time frustrating to use and difficult to make the pipeline understandable ...

I looked at Hugo and a few others but ended up going with Metalsmith (a JS static generator). I liked the plugable pipeline model of it, but cursed the state of Js tools (a few years ago) .

It seems indeed that Jekyll can become frustrating. I’m using Hugo right now. I didn’t know metalsmith...

I tried Jekyll and Gatsby.js, and albeit the latest is a mix of SSR
and SPA, I found some of their ideas in how to organize content to be
valuable, but I can't stand the tooling or the feeling of facing an
unneeded accidental complexity.

I’ve been meaning for ages to reimplement it in Smalltalk with a nice oo composite pipeline model and an easy way to debug and visualise what is going when getting your template right.

I’ve tried to restrain myself not to redo it in smalltalk but that would be great option. I don’t know the required effort though but I’ll be glad to be part of such project.

I spent the last weekend giving a try to that Gatbsy thing (nuxt.js
and vuepress are in the backlog too), and at 10PM on sunday I decided
to start coding something in Smalltalk, because it just feels better
to me.

I don't know how harder would it be, but that's a tool we currently
lack, the static-site generator. And we have support for different
templating, rendering canvas, and whatnot.

Combine this with the new headless image and it should easily plug into netlify .

Plus to netlify but also class export to servers. I thing Git(hubs) Pages are a nice option. In any cas, one nice pattern is to use git to store pages versions, and then you can replay on Pages / or on your own server / or on netlify.

When I think about netlify I don't think about an app (as in, an
executable) but as a simple static site, but if it possible to deploy
an app that is distributed and served by their CDN, then better!

I also wonder what would be possible with mini-image like Erik did.

I need to see more!
I don't know how independent a client image can be, how much you can
"pre-deploy" without needed to rehydrate the browser with server
changes, etc.
It's promising.

Regards!

Its intended  to work with Pharo 6 and the repo is on sthub. Would it be possible guile to put it on GitHub ?