[HN Gopher] Publii: Open-source local WYSIWYG static site CMS
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Publii: Open-source local WYSIWYG static site CMS
        
       Author : api
       Score  : 181 points
       Date   : 2022-07-23 15:48 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | danielovichdk wrote:
       | Looking at the source takes me back to 1999.
       | 
       | Nothing wrong with it. Just a mix and serves a purpose.
       | 
       | Thanks
        
       | bilekas wrote:
       | This is the first time seeing this and I have to say I'm super
       | interested.
       | 
       | Been researching some CMS' recently and was not really impressed,
       | was thinking of a Frankenstein with Strapi but this looks like it
       | could be absolutely perfect.
       | 
       | Great work, will check it out further and so far from what I see
       | will be joining the community to help !
        
       | nxss wrote:
       | Great as mini-solution, appreciate it.
        
       | fariszr wrote:
       | Wish something would exist as a GUI editor for other static
       | generators, like Hugo.
        
         | sfmike wrote:
         | totally agree, did a deep dive into this and the keywords kept
         | bringing up webflow essentially.
        
         | fmajid wrote:
         | Try Quiqr, which just launched at HugoConf:
         | 
         | https://open.quiqr.org/
         | 
         | Fair warning, it's a bit rough around the edges.
        
           | sfmike wrote:
           | is this gui? you can edit in wysiwyg?
        
             | fmajid wrote:
             | Yes, it's a WYSIWYG front-end running locally on your PC,
             | Mac or Linux computer.
             | 
             | Mind you, I haven't actually used it much beyond importing
             | a WP site, so this isn't an endorsement.
        
           | zimpenfish wrote:
           | > Fair warning, it's a bit rough around the edges.
           | 
           | Gave it a try - imported my hugo blog but then won't show me
           | any of the content, just says "add content to a new site!"
           | Hopefully this is an easy thing for fixing (I suspect the
           | antiquity of my hugo blog might be confusing the issue.)
        
       | loteck wrote:
       | I use Publii for a blog and enjoy it. I wanted actively developed
       | static site generation with some reasonable template/theme
       | options, and I didn't care about multi-user or team
       | collaboration. I achieved multi-device sync via storing Publii in
       | a cloud location.
       | 
       | I looked into developing a theme using their theme system and it
       | seemed unattainable for anyone who doesn't have significant time
       | to invest in understanding the guts of Publii.
        
         | indigodaddy wrote:
         | Does Publii still not officially support git versioning? If it
         | did I probably would have played with it..
        
           | marc_io wrote:
           | You can create a regular Publii-independent Github repository
           | to hold locally generated versions of your site.
           | 
           | This repository can then be automatically synced to the live
           | site via Cloudflare Pages. This option even allows using a
           | private repository.
           | 
           | https://getpublii.com/docs/configure-cloudflare-pages-
           | with-p...
        
           | troymc wrote:
           | I don't think Publii is aimed at people who know what git is.
           | Those people already have lots of great options.
        
         | newusertoday wrote:
         | do you know if tailwind can be used in it?
        
           | marc_io wrote:
           | It can. You can use whatever CSS framework or library to
           | create themes.
        
       | shroompasta wrote:
        
       | haunter wrote:
       | I want a love child of this and Elementor. That would be perfect
       | https://github.com/elementor/elementor
        
         | marc_io wrote:
         | I don't think this will happen in the near future. The app
         | doesn't even support pages properly.
        
       | caiobegotti wrote:
       | Has anyone experimented with its WP importer and could comment
       | about its quality or efficiency?
        
         | marc_io wrote:
         | Not very reliable. There are many reports of problems in the
         | public forum: https://forum.getpublii.com
        
         | Derbasti wrote:
         | It works. But it only works for standard WP stuff. Throw in a
         | non-standard gallery or something, and it will degrade.
        
       | lenova wrote:
       | Huge Publii fan here, glad to see it on the front page.
       | 
       | I feel like the only thing holding Publii back is the lack of
       | theme diversity, and definitely could use some third-party
       | designer love to push it forward.
        
         | marc_io wrote:
         | Yes, more themes are needed, but I think they should also focus
         | more on options for creating pages, especially landing pages.
         | This would be very interesting for business-focused sites --
         | which I believe are the majority these days.
        
         | imdsm wrote:
         | This was my take away too. Looks great, but personally if I'm
         | going to use this for a docs site, or for a wiki, or some sort
         | of knowledge base, I'd really need to have an out of the box
         | theme available. There are some there, but not enough variation
         | for my liking. So rather than a quick win, this has to be put
         | on the pile of "take a look and determine if I have time".
         | 
         | Not that it takes away from what looks like a great product,
         | but that's the journey I went through, as a regular, overly-
         | busy employee-startup founder, 14 hours into a Saturday. "I
         | love it, but it's over my time-cost threshold if it needs
         | custom themes".
        
         | StevePerkins wrote:
         | This seems to be the story for nearly all static site
         | generators (except for maybe Jekyll, whose drawback is it's a
         | hassle for non-Ruby devs to properly setup a Ruby environment,
         | especially on Windows).
         | 
         | I migrated from WordPress to Hugo for awhile, but eventually
         | gave and migrated back. You can love WordPress or hate it, but
         | it has an infinite variety of paid and free professional-
         | quality themes. Hugo has a slew of one-person amateur projects,
         | the best of which are half-baked clones of WordPress themes.
         | What's worse, they tend to be poorly-maintained, and stop
         | working whenever Hugo introduces breaking changes (which at
         | least a few years ago, was frequent).
         | 
         | I appreciate all of the conceptual advantages of a static site
         | generator versus a CMS application host. But for most users, a
         | website tool is simply only as good as its theme ecosystem.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | kizer wrote:
       | I've been looking for something like this / thinking of
       | developing a light-weight, similar tool.
        
       | jrm4 wrote:
       | It's interesting to see people rediscover this idea of "develop
       | locally, push static site to web," but I think the weirdest thing
       | for me is, why was this not a continuous thing?
       | 
       | Broadly, this looks good for a blog format, but not sure if
       | that's what people need?
       | 
       | Anyway, for those interested, I just use http://zim-wiki.org plus
       | a custom CSS template I did.
        
         | pbowyer wrote:
         | > It's interesting to see people rediscover this idea of
         | "develop locally, push static site to web,"
         | 
         | Yes! Dreamweaver was good 19 years ago and remains good today.
         | Being able to see what you're doing, without running like
         | treacle in the browser whilst editing (I'm looking at you, Divi
         | and other WP visual theme builders), is an awesome experience.
         | Like professionals in many other fields expect from their
         | software.
        
           | tailspin2019 wrote:
           | > Dreamweaver was good 19 years ago and remains good today.
           | 
           | Notepad.exe was good 19 years ago.
           | 
           | Dreamweaver? Not so much.
           | 
           | :)
        
             | bilekas wrote:
             | Dreamweaver was a good idea, but impossible for them to
             | maintain. In my experience it was regularly giving bad
             | results.
             | 
             | It was a great tool for learning HTML and CSS though, but
             | mainly because you would always end up just going into the
             | source to fix it and view in DW.
             | 
             | I would be very nervous of anyone using it these days for
             | anything else.
        
               | danielvaughn wrote:
               | I'm actually curious to see what Dreamweaver looks like
               | these days, because I just recently found out that it's
               | still around. I haven't seen it since like 2009 and I
               | honestly thought it had been shut down.
        
               | marc_io wrote:
               | It's still around, but it's no longer being improved,
               | just getting maintenance. Most of the people involved
               | with it migrated elsewhere.
               | 
               | Most who used Dreamweaver and relied on its extensions
               | are now using another similar app called Wappler.
        
               | doodlesdev wrote:
               | For those that are into Bootstrap then Bootstrap Studio
               | is also a good option which I found produces pretty
               | decent results.
        
           | mysterydip wrote:
           | I used dreamweaver when they had coldfusion integration. We
           | ended up using the wysiwig just for verification because it
           | would make the code so bloated (by late 90's standards).
           | 
           | I recall using HotDog Professional for my personal stuff.
           | Anyone else use it?
        
             | rascul wrote:
             | I remember using HotDog pro back in the day. I don't
             | remember much about it though, even how much I used it.
        
           | moonchrome wrote:
           | >Dreamweaver was good 19 years ago
           | 
           | Good for what ? I remember designers trying to create pages
           | with and the generated code was useless garbage once the
           | customisation requests came in and they called in a dev
        
           | allendoerfer wrote:
           | Many other fields do not have to edit turing complete
           | results. Also you don't need WYSIWYG but WYSIWTG, since you
           | want to see what THEY will be getting, they being endless
           | combinations of systems.
           | 
           | I was there, too. Dreamweaver was not good enough.
        
             | imdsm wrote:
             | Dreamweaver all too often spun nightmares
        
         | indigodaddy wrote:
         | Would be interested in seeing your website if you might care to
         | share it?
        
           | jrm4 wrote:
           | http://jrm4.com
           | 
           | With this:
           | 
           | https://github.com/jrm4/Eight-Five-Zero
           | 
           | (Kind of messy, but it's utilitarian for my work and such)
        
             | indigodaddy wrote:
             | Thanks. A lot of good resources on your site!
        
               | jrm4 wrote:
               | Thanks, I think the thing that has served me the best is
               | how easy and quick I've made it to _update._ I open zim
               | (which is a native app, no login or anything), change
               | what I need to change, and have a short little SSH /rsync
               | shell script that updates.
               | 
               | It's _really_ nice that I can update the website in the
               | middle of class as I 'm teaching with very little issue.
        
       | texasviking wrote:
       | Did Publii ever get nested structure support? I remember having
       | to perform workarounds for subcategories.
        
       | huashu wrote:
       | running several blogs on publii! (https://typogram.co/blog/)
       | Loving it!
       | 
       | the only feedback I have is making co-editing easy. sometimes I
       | co-write articles. this is rly hard with a desktop app.
       | 
       | Also, wishing for some kind of SEO plugin that would make writing
       | descriptions easier.
        
       | marban wrote:
       | Good to see the MS FrontPage days are back :]
        
         | booi wrote:
         | FrontPage was ahead of its time
        
       | jacquesc wrote:
       | Wow, seriously nice work. Downloaded it and started playing
       | around. Pretty much exactly the features I wanted from a CMS.
       | Both simple and powerful.
       | 
       | I attempted to build a CMS years ago and this is pretty much
       | exactly what I wanted to create... but sadly was too incompetent
       | to finish.
       | 
       | Nice initial list of themes, hope they build up a designer
       | community around this.
       | 
       | I could see a commercial hosted version being pretty popular as
       | well (for companies that need to collaborate on posts). Easily
       | could outcompete Squarespace and others.
       | 
       | Anyways, bravo!
        
       | jbverschoor wrote:
       | Cool, but it's only for blogs.. I was hoping for something
       | similar with the concept of "pages", and design-blocks
        
       | synergy20 wrote:
       | my impression of cms means you need login to read the content
       | except for part of them that are set to public,static site is not
       | a cms per that definition to me.
       | 
       | it is perfect for sites contain all public content though.
        
       | dbrgn wrote:
       | There is a somewhat similar system called Lektor, originally
       | written by Armin Ronacher (of Flask/Jinja fame):
       | https://www.getlektor.com/ You define your models, then start the
       | local devserver to add entries for the models. In the end, it
       | stores the data in the filesystem and outputs static HTML.
        
       | mxuribe wrote:
       | I always liked this model of personal CMS. Back in the day i
       | think it was called MovableType or something was quite popular
       | too.
        
       | hamdouni wrote:
       | The return of dreamweaver...
        
         | marc_io wrote:
         | Dreamweaver was a visual code editor, Publii has no resemblance
         | to it.
        
         | prophesi wrote:
         | WYSIWYG's are essential to have non-coders post on your site :/
         | Or for handing off to mom-and-pop clients.
        
       | netcyrax wrote:
       | Looks awesome! But why not providing a web interface as well?
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-07-23 23:00 UTC)