Publish VS eleventy 🕚⚡️

For Swift there’s https://github.com/JohnSundell/Publish which is a framework to create a static site generator. It’s really good.

- I use a static site generator written in Swift: https://github.com/johnsundell/publish (wouldn't recommend it though). - Vanilla CSS - Minimal JS (no frameworks needed)

First thing I thought of was John Sundell's Publish, then make all the articles as posts. A bit of HTML work and have it list it as a sidebar with an order metadata of the markdown. You could then use the LocalWebsitePublishPlugin to make it all accessible offline too - though I haven't tested it so I dont know if it works or not. There are not a lot, but some plugins available too that are helpful, and it's nice to be inside of the same language ecosystem.

There is a SSG that uses Swift: https://github.com/JohnSundell/Publish

I made https://will.institute/ as a place to post stuff after bailing on most social media, the existing content was migrated over from my old Instagram account.

Static site built in Swift with Publish: https://github.com/JohnSundell/Publish

Since I got out of the habit of posting anything on Instagram for a couple years I haven’t really gotten back into it for my own site, but one of these days I’ll put some new pictures up!

The best static site generator in Swift is Publish, but the Swift.org website is much older than that project.

Currently working on something similar, but in Swift, with Publish. Still a long way off since my css skills leave a lot to be desired, lol

If a static website works for you, you can use Publish library by John Sundell.

"There are dozens of us" but seriously, there is some interest from users but most projects done by companies have been abandoned, SwiftUI feels almost like a language divergence, which is frustrating. I'll list what I know about but it's by no means comprehensive.

The good news is that server side on Linux is still working well, Vapor 4 is solid, growing and looks like it has a bright future and Perfect is still going too, though Perfect seems disjointed from the main community. IBM's Kitura and involvement with Swift is over though. Server side seems like it's best future right now, since it's more performant than Javascript and uses less cycles, which can have a lot of cost benefits.

Static site generation looks good too, Publish by John Sundell being the most famous (https://github.com/JohnSundell/Publish) but a lot of others have started springing up lately.

"Swift for Tensorflow" by Google has been shut down. Though that was mostly Google giving advice on how to evolve Swift to work better for ML. It's a shame too, since it felt like Fast.Ai was adopting it and starting to teach it at one point, so the shutdown felt a bit premature, but this is Google after all, shutting things down is what they do.

Swift 5.0+ seems to have stabilized the language quite a bit too(ABI Stability and other things), which is a good thing, as hopefully the tutorials/docs from now on should remain more consistent. The built in package manager "Swift Package Manager" seems to be working better too, though there are still a lot of complaints/missing features, but on the whole I like it.

Swift on Linux seems to be officially supported by more flavors of Linux than it used to be. Meanwhile Swift on Windows works right now but I wouldn't use it in production yet, it throws errors that are the sort that if you ask anyone they will answer "that's normal, ignore that". Some have even gotten modern Swift to run on older MacOS's leveraging LLVM.

Swift WASM seems to have had a big update with Swift 5.4 https://forums.swift.org/t/swiftwasm-5-4-0-has-been-released... though I've not yet tried it having given up on Swift WASM about a year ago.

Youtuber Stega's Gate(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBXFkK2B4w9856wBJfCGufg) is building a cross platform game engine in swift.

IntelliJ has a decent alternative to Xcode now too, using Clion with an app made by them(though it's still not as integrated as Xcode, nothing would be).

Getting it to run on android is technically possible, but the workaround it too much, but that's mostly on Google actually, since the support for writing things in C for Android is so depreciated it's a joke.

The Docs are still terrible though, have been to my knowledge since 3.0 became outdated. That said the official books are alright and there are tutorial communities that are pretty good too, but it's shameful that the docs should be that useless.

So yeah, Swift is nearly viable for non Mac things, but there aren't much for libraries outside of backend. Some are tinkering and making cool stuff, but at times it's difficult when even the non app related programming tutorials for those are like "let's do it on MacOS using Xcode".All of that said, it's my favorite language, I want it to have a community similar to Rust's but I don't think Apple supports it the right way for that happen, they seem ok with it staying inside their ecosystem, like they are ok if the community does stuff outside of it, but they aren't helping it or encouraging it, is the general feeling. Ironically I was recommended to Swift initially because of the community that it had at the time, the caveat being "if you want to make apps for Apple's ecosystem", which isn't terrible, but it's not what I want. I'll probably give up on it if it doesn't change in the next year or so and go all in on Rust is likely what will happen, but again it's a shame.

This post outlines the steps for migrating an existing BlogCFC blog to a JamStack, with a focus on using Eleventy.

I suggest you to try out eleventhy (https://www.11ty.dev/)

Quite simple to start, and a nice system to add some scripting and styles without the requirement of bringing in a framework.

A production flag enables you to run activities in dev or production such as minifying assets, showing draft posts, etc. There isn't a built-in flag or function that comes with eleventy (11ty) specifically for this. However we have this info at our fingertips.

I can't recommend Eleventy enough!

https://www.11ty.dev

I converted my WordPress blog to Eleventy 4 years ago and never looked back, it's been delightful!

https://www.joshcanhelp.com/taking-wordpress-to-eleventy/

It’s 2024, and you are about to start a new project. Do you reach for React, a framework you know and love or do you look at one of the other hot new frameworks like Astro, Enhance, 11ty, SvelteKit or gasp, plain vanilla Web Components?

The "dev" script is running the eleventy server in dev mode. The details of the script are not important for this discussion, but to round out the background here is an abbreviated version of my package.json:

Eleventy is a fast and powerful SSG that really shines when it comes to pure static site generation because it does not require the loading of a client-side JavaScript bundle in order to serve content.

The irony is using a JavaScript-based static site generator to make the site: https://www.11ty.dev

https://doublejosh.com/post/186193119278/metalsmithjs-is-sti...

Then two years ago I needed a more robust SSR system based on React, so I went with GatsbyJS. It's insanely mature and intuitive, but as we all know that community and business is now drying up too. But the framework is still great.

Now everyone sings the praises of NextJS, which can be used for SSR but is intended for applications and active server endpoints. But more complexity doesn't mean better.

I'm keen to try other simple frameworks when the result is a static site. I may give https://www.11ty.dev a shot.

11ty is a lightweight static site generator. I chopped up my HTML and used the 11ty starter template called eleventy-base-blog as the structural foundation for the site.