Static Website Challenges
Static websites and blogs are quite popular alternatives these days but what dynamic features do you miss most or whose absence/challenge stops you from making the leap?
Static websites and blogs are quite popular alternatives these days but what dynamic features do you miss most or whose absence/challenge stops you from making the leap?
I'm a big proponent of static sites. I've used Jekyll in the past, but recently heard about Netlify + Gatsby and decided to give it a try. It's great!
Netlify solves a lot of issues: they have a CMS, can accept form inputs, and they can even host serverless functions for you to process user interactions. It's free up to a certain point.
The biggest issue, and something I'd gladly pay for, is paid user accounts + permissions. Imagine making a static membership site where users would need to pay to access content. An embeddable account management system! I want to be able to check against permissions to make sure only paying users can access certain pages.
I'm "just" a frontend engineer + designer, so I don't know how complicated this is. Although if anyone thinks they could do it, I'd be happy to help as both a businessperson and UI designer/developer. I have a business degree + management experience as well.
PS: I've gotten around this issue by using Memberful.com in the past, but it's not ideal. You can tell the service wasn't really made for single page app integration, but rather for WordPress users and the like.
you mean something like https://forestry.io?
Hmm. There might be a misunderstanding.
Would Forestry allow me to gate access to certain content until a visitor creates (and pays) for an account?
If so I would definitely use it!
Have you looked at Netlify's Identity feature? Does that address your issue?
As far as I know, you can't connect payments to Netlify's Identify feature.
As a follow on I see authentication thus far reported as the biggest concern. What are your feelings of having your comments live outside your static site on Disqus and other remote solutions?
I'll throw my very contrarian experience in: I built my first webpage back in 1995 or thereabouts. It was static. My personal website has been static ever since. Obviously I'm not missing much, since a dynamic system hasn't managed to tempt me for twenty three years. :)
Thanks madhadron.
Finding a static CMS that I can host myself to eliminate an additional monthly fee and allow for non technical collaboration with user authentication. I think it's possible, but it didn't look easy when I briefly researched it.
Thanks Chris. See below about Forestry. I will take a look as well.
I'm a big fan of Forestry for managing content for my Hugo sites (or jekyll). It has a free plan, supports multiple users, and the editor can't be beat even for non-technical folks. https://forestry.io/
I have always loved Forestry's design!
I've used KeystoneJS in the past and then just made a build step that pushes the site to a static implementation. I've also seen this but haven't tried it, looks promising https://www.gatsbyjs.org/docs/netlify-cms/
Thanks Kyle.
I'm most familiar with Jekyll, so I'm going to use that but Netfly CMS was actually on this weeks agenda to test integrating.
I'm confident I'll get that part working... and then I'll have to figure out user auth, and i've never done that before.
There's actually this great project that could get you a head start! https://github.com/AustinGreen/gatsby-starter-netlify-cms
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
If you're using gatsby, there is a plugin for algolia and it's great.
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
Parallax scrolling was a short-time fad, but I saw some great looking sites that used it well.
I think it was too complex to use on WP sites and mobiles, then faded out.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
Stuff like comment and form support.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
Thanks for the feedback
Ask three questions and then answer them yourself. You are a pro.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago