Just pick a Static Site Generator and start writing

Ever since I put my website together, it's been humming along by publishing content with Publii. Overall I really like it, but I'm not a seasoned expert on the pros and cons of all the different static site generators (SSGs). It looks like Publii isn't even one of the most popular! The most important thing to me was simply to pick one so I could reduce the friction and just start writing.

First and foremost, Publii is a desktop app. There's no mobile app, and there's no browser-based app. If you remember older web tools, it works similarly to Dreamweaver which, wow, still exists. 

Let's walk through what it looks like for me to use Publii day-to-day, and maybe see if it reduces the friction for you to create your own website?

Normal Publii Workflow

First, I grab my laptop that has Publii installed on it. If you have multiple computers that you want to post with, it's possible for them to stay in sync if your Publii folders are stored in Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. Highly, highly recommended, if only because the best backup strategies are the ones you don't even have to think about.

You start your updates by creating a new Post.

As I write, I save it as a Draft because I almost never just type something up then publish it. You can see all the blurred out stuff above is just a bunch of draft posts that I'm frequently iterating on.

The editor itself has all the text-formatting features you could ask for, including the raw HTML if you want. You also have the option to add tags and other metadata stuff as you see fit. It's all pretty intuitive and easy to use.

I preview constantly to open my post in the browser to view it as you see it. This is especially crucial when I'm building little toy code apps to make sure they have proper styling, functionality, etc. 

Once I'm happy with it, I can "Publish and close." But that doesn't mean it's live on the web yet. You need to click the "Sync your website" button to actually start the process of pushing your content onto the internet.

Without doing that, your content isn't "published" in the traditional sense, since it's still sitting on your computer, or on Dropbox's servers. Clicking Sync your website accomplishes the following when everything is set up.

Pros

• It's free!
• It's dead simple. I debated even writing this post at all because it's so straightforward.
• It's open source, which means I can make pull requests when I don't like something! Getting them accepted is a different matter.
• It's so nice to have a static site with all the proper formatting, links, navigation, themes, etc. all taken care of for you without doing it by hand.

Cons

• Perhaps the biggest downside is that by design you can't create content via your browser; you need to use the desktop. Personally, I view that as a feature, not a bug. For all my talk about reducing friction for writing, I like the separation to allow me to focus when I do pull out my laptop.
• No autosave as you type. This is a big one honestly, but mitigated by saving a draft every so often. I think I might make a pull request to have CMD+Sor Ctrl+Ssave a draft.
  • Also you can't copy/paste pictures, but you can drag-and-drop. Maybe another PR opportunity?
• You can't publish on a schedule. Again, that's by design because if a plain ol' html file is on the internet, you can access it. My workaround is using Google Drive to keep all my files backed up, but nothing gets synced to Github/Cloudflare until I publish it manually. There's a little sqlite db that keeps all your drafts staged until you publish. 

Conclusion

I didn't even get into the various themes and plugins because they're not part of the day-to-day workflow. I've really enjoyed using Publii and don't plan to change that for the forseeable future. I don't know what the future holds of course, but it's been nice to have a simple app help me carve out my slice of the internet.