My website is jacquesgauvin.com

 

Attached is my front page index file.

index.html

The print button should be considerably bigger, no one will find it otherwise.

Yeah, I've just looked at it again and that print button is going to need to be massive I'm afraid.

Conventionally one might expect a homepage to display a site title and some kind of navigation menu or an overview of the site content, what it's purpose is or how it is arranged. Unless this is a resource for people who already know what's there and who you are I think you should look at using a CMS. Not Wordpress but something simple with no database which will enable you to easily organise your pages into categories and heirarchies with a corresponding navigation menu.

Conventionally one might expect a homepage to display a site title and some kind of navigation menu or an overview of the site content, what it's purpose is or how it is arranged. Unless this is a resource for people who already know what's there and who you are I think you should look at using a CMS. Not Wordpress but something simple with no database which will enable you to easily organise your pages into categories and heirarchies with a corresponding navigation menu.

 

A static site manager then. Jekyll is a good option.

 

A static site manager then. Jekyll is a good option.

 

Not necessarily static, Not necessarily flat file, but simple enough to meet some basic requirements without too much learning.

 

The requirements are I would guess

• good separation of style and content, with code written in one place only so the site can be altered easily
• handling sub-pages, urls, slugs, titles, menus and lists of articles, maybe with tags and search as well as hierarchies
• easy edit through a nice clear backend panel.
• a sensible level of security

https://www.cmscritic.com/flat-file-cms/ is a list from last year. I use GetSimple a lot, but I haven't recently looked at the alternatives

TinW,

 

I appreciate your attention and comments. I will try to look into the things you pointed out and see if I can make some positive changes. I'd be the first to admit that I am weak in managing and organizing. The task is further complicated by the variety of material on my website. I might need several categories of miscellaneous items.

 

Not necessarily static, Not necessarily flat file, but simple enough to meet some basic requirements without too much learning.

 

The requirements are I would guess

• good separation of style and content, with code written in one place only so the site can be altered easily
• handling sub-pages, urls, slugs, titles, menus and lists of articles, maybe with tags and search as well as hierarchies
• easy edit through a nice clear backend panel.
• a sensible level of security

https://www.cmscritic.com/flat-file-cms/ is a list from last year. I use GetSimple a lot, but I haven't recently looked at the alternatives

For those requirements I would absolutely go with a static site generator. Posts and articles can be written in markdown - this kind of stuff is what static site generators are built for.

You don't have to mess around with databases and the security that comes with it. Your site runs faster as there's no DB to query. Cheaper hosting as the resulting bundle is just HTML, CSS and JavaScript (free if using Github). My blog is done this way and the only cost I have is the domain name.

 

The only time you would want to use a CMS is if a non-developer is updating the site.

Edited May 26, 20179 yr by rbrtsmith

I don't think I agree with you, but maybe I don't know what a static site generator is. Even I like to use a nice clear back end rather than mucking about with files of text and markup, I like the easy backups, the 'undo' function, the ability to just add and delete pages or posts, sitewide style alterations etc.. A static site generator does that? It's a CMS then. And I'm not totally a non-developer. My flat file cms is a php program which generates html on the fly, on the server when the page is requested, much like any CMS. Does a static site generator not do that? Does it generate the html just once then write it to disk? I had a wordpress plugin that did that once, so you could run wordpress locally on wampserver and upload the static html files to free webspace without any mysql service, but it was a bit of a faff.

I don't think I agree with you, but maybe I don't know what a static site generator is. Even I like to use a nice clear back end rather than mucking about with files of text and markup, I like the easy backups, the 'undo' function, the ability to just add and delete pages or posts, sitewide style alterations etc.. A static site generator does that? It's a CMS then. And I'm not totally a non-developer. My flat file cms is a php program which generates html on the fly, on the server when the page is requested, much like any CMS. Does a static site generator not do that? Does it generate the html just once then write it to disk? I had a wordpress plugin that did that once, so you could run wordpress locally on wampserver and upload the static html files to free webspace without any mysql service, but it was a bit of a faff.

 

When working on a project you should always use Git, this gives you infinite undos, it also serves as a backup as everything including previous commits is stored in the repository. Actually this gives far more control over posts than any CMS system can offer you. You can see exactly who has committed what, when and can be peer reviewed before it gets put into the master branch - This is to the granularity of individual characters. If a contributor fixed a typo in one of my articles I would see that clearly highlighted.

 

A static site generator takes posts articles / whatever (written in markdown not text files) along with HTML templates and generates all the HTML files for the site which gets deployed when a change to the master branch is made.

So when somebody visits the site there are no requests to a DB or backend to interpret and render out the templates so it's considerably faster, especially if you receive high traffic. It's literally just sending up the relevant static resources. This means there's no security implications to be concerned with.

 

The term "static" might be a bit misleading as the site can be very quickly updated by pushing changes to the Git repository.

 

Because of the above benefits it's becoming increasingly popular to use static site generators. Barak Obamas official site is built this way. Like I said I'd only look to a CMS for clients who want to update a site as they are likely not to understand Git or Markdown - but if they do then I would definitely build the site in this way.

 

Not sure what you mean with the style alterations. CMS shouldn't care about styling at all - it's concern should be content. CSS is CSS. Whether or not you have a CMS or you're using a static site generator should have no influence on this - you bundle and serve your CSS however you wish. The same for JavaScript. Of course with JavaScript you can interact with any API service to make the static site actually far from static.

I've seen microservice architectures for applications that use a static site generator for some content, and other parts that are completely interactive where users can perform CRUD operations and that talks to a service that interacts with a database. But the general "static" content is served up via the static site generator - This again allows the site to perform much better and is no longer a monolithic site but an application made up of many different services.

 

https://davidwalsh.name/introduction-static-site-generators is worth reading and concludes that static site generators aren't for everything, but in many cases are very useful and the OPs website is a perfect fit for a static site generator - although he will need some basic knowledge of Git and Markdown.

Edited May 27, 20179 yr by rbrtsmith

Ta. Interesting. Sooner or later I will have to change my way of working. Sometimes I resolve to sharpen up my wordpress skills, since everybody uses wordpress these days. When I look at it and I see all the unecessary complication my heart sinks. I could learn jekyll instead.

 

Re sitewide style alterations. Yes of course little things are just css, but last month I did a total revamp of two sites I had made a few years ago. Not just css but new themes, new css classes for style and layout, new images but a lot of the text left the same. The text content is updated easily from one year to the next or as and when. Both completed reasonably swiftly (well one actually) without ballsing anything up. Being able to do that is a big bonus from the CMS I think.

Ta. Interesting. Sooner or later I will have to change my way of working. Sometimes I resolve to sharpen up my wordpress skills, since everybody uses wordpress these days. When I look at it and I see all the unecessary complication my heart sinks. I could learn jekyll instead.

 

Re sitewide style alterations. Yes of course little things are just css, but last month I did a total revamp of two sites I had made a few years ago. Not just css but new themes, new css classes for style and layout, new images but a lot of the text left the same. The text content is updated easily from one year to the next or as and when. Both completed reasonably swiftly (well one actually) without ballsing anything up. Being able to do that is a big bonus from the CMS I think.

A lot of web agencies use WordPress, but very few (if any) of the serious software houses use it - BBC, Sainsbury's (Where I work), Guardian etc use it.

If you have ambitions to work on serious systems forget about WordPress and spend time learning Node with Express, Postgres, MongoDB. I'd really have to hate working with something like WordPress having been fortunate enough to be exposed to other ways of building web applications.

 

@@citypaul on here can expand more on this as he works with Node at the BBC amongst other things.

Edited May 29, 20179 yr by rbrtsmith

A lot of web agencies use WordPress, but very few (if any) of the serious software houses use it - BBC, Sainsbury's (Where I work), Guardian etc use it.

If you have ambitions to work on serious systems forget about WordPress and spend time learning Node with Express, Postgres, MongoDB. I'd really have to hate working with something like WordPress having been fortunate enough to be exposed to other ways of building web applications.

 

@@citypaul on here can expand more on this as he works with Node at the BBC amongst other things.

TBH I have no ambitions to work on serious systems. I make websites for small businesses and charities, locally. It's a handy bit of part time income, and I am keen to keep up to date and to keep it going.

 

Here is a site I just updated with a new theme. The workflow is

1. Find free web template online ( https://www.wowthemes.net/aries-free-html-bootstrap-template/ )
2. Convert to theme for CMS
3. Upload, activate.
4. Fiddle with it a bit
5. Done

http://www.aisholt.org/

Edited May 29, 20179 yr by TimW

 

I think if that's all you're interested in then Wordpress is fine. As an extra source of income it's a nice little earner. Different people have different goals I guess. Wordpress isn't something I'd ever want to work with, but I do this stuff for a living and not just a side earner. Keep doing what you're doing in that case. If you ever decide to make a more serious stab at web dev as your sole source of income I'd investigate alternatives...

I agree with Paul. If your clients wish to update their websites then WordPress is fine. But for the OP it's his own website that he will be updating. Like maybe your own personal website - That is a good candidate for a static site generator. If you will be controlling the content for a client indefinitely then again it's a good choice.

The only real downside is that static site generators are really aimed at sites that are administered by developers. It's worth your time to learn even for part time work, as you can save your clients money by not having a database and so on - the site can be freely hosted on gh-pages.

 

Even with WordPress though I wouldn't be hacking away at existing themes. Build a boilerplate theme that just contains a bit of structure and visually is a blank slate, include a CSS framework and do bespoke design and builds - I know of a few freelancers who make good money from this - you can charge much more for bespoke work. This is pretty much what my last place did and we were able to sell brochure sites for £6k upwards.

 

If you can offer both bespoke WP and Static site projects then that should make you more marketable.

 

Edited May 29, 20179 yr by rbrtsmith

TBH I have no ambitions to work on serious systems. I make websites for small businesses and charities, locally. It's a handy bit of part time income, and I am keen to keep up to date and to keep it going.

 

Here is a site I just updated with a new theme. The workflow is

1. Find free web template online ( https://www.wowthemes.net/aries-free-html-bootstrap-template/ )
2. Convert to theme for CMS
3. Upload, activate.
4. Fiddle with it a bit
5. Done

http://www.aisholt.org/

 

Nice and clean. I think that the bulleted list text is too small, though.

(I say that strictly as a user who found it less easy to read.)

cityPaul,

Thanks for pointing out that print button issue. I had no idea. I don't use a smartphone but I should pay closer attention to how my website looks on one.

TinW,

 

A friend has a much larger site than mine and he uses Drupal (CMS) to manage his files. He is now considering getting rid of it and returning to simple html because of the inconveniences to Drupal. He warned me that even choosing and testing a CMS can take a real tole on time and effort. I appreciate your suggestions but I am reluctant to venture into something that dramatic at this time.

I built the frontend for a church website when working in my previous job in Sweden a few years back http://solnaforsamling.se/ to give an example of how a modern religious website looks.

cityPaul,

Thanks for pointing out that print button issue. I had no idea. I don't use a smartphone but I should pay closer attention to how my website looks on one.

 

​Responsinator.com can give you a few examples: http://www.responsinator.com/?url=www.jacquesgauvin.com

 

On any type of device, it would be a more pleasant experience if each of your own site links opened in the same tab, so that we can just arrow back in the browser to go back to the main front page (especially seeing as you don't have a menu system). I notice that each page opens in a new tab which is not ideal. Removing target="_blank" ​in the HTML (for your own page links) will resolve this issue.

You might want to keep that code for the links linking to other sites.

Edited May 30, 20179 yr by Grant Barker

a real toll on time and effort

 

I'm sure there's a debate there somewhere..

Edited May 30, 20179 yr by Grant Barker

...Even with WordPress though I wouldn't be hacking away at existing themes. Build a boilerplate theme that just contains a bit of structure and visually is a blank slate, include a CSS framework and do bespoke design and builds - I know of a few freelancers who make good money from this - ....

 

That's exactly what I was doing two or three years ago but time moves on quickly and those sites are looking older now and standards and fashions have moved ahead. My perception is that I can't any more be designing from basic boilerplate code and the market I serve which is rural and local needs a very keen price, which means a very efficient job, eg hack a template, don't spend days re-inventing the wheel then ask for £6k for it. I would be laughed at.

Discussing this website is like watching my hair grow, pointless and time waisting, that is a bad website mate, what the hell has happened.