Static Site Generators Are Great

A static site generator is a piece of software that takes a bunch of input files and turns them into a static website. Often these input files consist of some content and a theme for making the content look nice.

A static website is one where the content does not change. It is static. Everything you see on this website is just as when I last uploaded it to a server.

This has obvious disadvantages. I cannot have comments on here or show something like the current number of followers I have on any platform, without resorting to JavaScript calling third-party resources.

But it also has advantages. A static website is simple. After editing my content, I push a button on my computer to preview the website and another one to upload it. That’s it. I’m currently (April 2024) using GitHub Pages which is free to use and really stable. I can go months without thinking about this website because I know that it won’t go down or be overrun by hackers.

A static site generator works best for me and can probably work for you too, if you are not afraid to touch the terminal and fiddle around with theme files.

Now that I have switched the site generator once again, it might be fun to reflect on the changes this website went through. You can read about the history of this website here.