sitepress VS Jekyll

I'm currently facing the same problem - adding a blog to a Rails app.

I thought Sitepress looks interesting, as its supposed to integrate with Rails. Have you given that one a try?

https://sitepress.cc/

I’ve been down this path enough times that I built https://sitepress.cc/, which lets you embed content in a rails app with features that are present in Jekyll, Middleman, etc. like Frontmatter, site hierarchy traversal, etc. It keeps content as files in the app/content directory, but when it’s time to pull data in from the Rails app for SEO, it’s all right there in the Rails app. There’s no “Headless CMS” crap to jump through.

For me, this is another way of keeping everything in a monolith, and which requires a lot less context switching. If I’m building a feature and I want to create marketing or support content for it, it’s all right there in the same repo. I just create the markdown files I need, commit them to the repo, and I’m don.

The thought of switching between a static content site or something like Webflow just seems silly. I think they only makes sense for huge teams.

In case you want something like Middleman (frontmatter, static compilation, ...), but embedable in your Rails app, Sitepress is really cool solution (you can even run it without Rails!): https://sitepress.cc

I went the opposite direction and built a static site generator on top of Rails: https://sitepress.cc/

Turns out, Rails is a really good web framework! I tried building Sitepress on something “light weight”, Tilt and Rack, and it was a pain. I found myself constantly solving the same problems that were already solved in Rails. At some point it dawned on me that I could just build on top of a few parts of Rails, so I did. I wrote about it at https://fly.io/ruby-dispatch/single-file-rails-app/

I’m glad I did! Now I can plug all of the Rails template handlers, view components, and other Rails plugins into it and ride off that entire communities docs.

If you find yourself thinking, “rails is too heavy”, consider shedding the parts of Rails that you don’t need. Then as your application grows in complexity and you find yourself needing more parts of Rails, bring it back in.

As I was building Sitepress (a site generator like Middleman, Jekyll, & Bridgetown), I stumbled into the idea that a Rails application can exist in a single file and wrote about it at https://fly.io/ruby-dispatch/single-file-rails-app/.

Agreed. I built https://sitepress.cc/ that uses git + files to manage content in Rails, but it needs an editor.

I’m not sure if the right thing to do is build a web editor or smooth out git workflows so that non-technical people can open content files with desktop software to make changes to the content.

I created https://sitepress.cc/ because you can have both! It can run a dynamic content site from a Rails app or it can compile out pages that can be deployed to any static website host.

It doesn’t have a front end for authoring pages, styles, etc, but that could be built on top of this library.

I was using Middleman for a while, but then grew tired of all the dependencies I had to always keep up-to-date. I did the completely illogical thing and built my own static site generator, https://sitepress.cc/

A few years later and I ended up deleting most of it and replacing the internals with Rails. Now Sitepress is just a tiny rails application sitting on top of a bunch of files. Most of the maintenance and dependencies are handled by major Rails lib maintainers.

When you deploy it, you can compile it into static files and deploy as you’d expect, but you can also deploy it as a rails or rack app … or even embed it into an existing rails app.

When Rails 7.0 gets released I’ll drop JS importmaps into the default install for free and have my dream static site generator that doesn’t have a huge asset compilation step.

This blog is running on Hugo. It had previously been running on Jekyll. Both these SSGs ship with the ability to create excerpts from your markdown content in 1 line or thereabouts.

Jekyll

In future, if you want to move from Jekyll to something else, you just have to worry about that `_posts` and `_assets` folder. They may have different naming convention but you can just config-managed it or change it to your choice. This is why I suggested owning that two yourself.

You also may not worry about FrontMatter[3] (meta in the header) and its accompanying jazz by asking Jekyll to use the plugins `jekyll-optional-front-matter` and `jekyll-titles-from-headings`. These comes as part of the officially supported Jekyll plugins[4] by Github. That way, you are just writing a human-readable plain-text spiced up with Markdown and readable by almost every other Static Site Generator.

Now, play with the `_config.yml` that Jekyll generates for you from the theme above to define your post dates, navigation, and others. Jekyll is one of the OGs — the Gandalf of Static Site Generators. If you have a problem, someone somewhere has solved that.

Did I missed something? I was supposed to write a blog article for my website on this one and this comment will serve as my starting bullet points.

1. https://docs.github.com/en/pages/setting-up-a-github-pages-s...

2. https://jekyllrb.com

3. https://frontmatter.codes/docs/markdown

4. https://docs.github.com/en/pages/setting-up-a-github-pages-s...

"Using the Chirpy theme for Jekyll."

I would suggest looking into static site generators. Some popular examples, which are used myself are: - Hugo: https://gohugo.io/ - Jekyll: https://jekyllrb.com

In terms of GitHub stars, SSGs like Next.js, Hugo, Gatsby, Docusaurus, Nuxt.js, and Jekyll top the list. Some popular SSGs even host conferences and workshops, providing resources and networking opportunities for those looking to explore more advanced topics in depth.

I created my blog using Jekyll, a great open-source tool that can transform your markdown content into a simple, old-fashioned-but-trendy, static site. What are the advantages of this approach? The site is super-light, super-fast, super-secure and SEO-friendly. Of course, it’s not always the best solution, but for some use cases, like a simple personal blog, it’s really a good option.

Yes, it's Markdown and I use https://jekyllrb.com with the theme "jekyll-theme-hacker" to generate the site. I quite like how simple it is.