[HN Gopher] Free static site generator for small restaurants and...
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Free static site generator for small restaurants and cafes
Author : fullstacking
Score : 50 points
Date : 2025-12-02 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lite.localcafe.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (lite.localcafe.org)
| davisr wrote:
| No one should need JS to see the soups when that could be handled
| perfectly fine with CSS. I wish restaurants would just make their
| homepage a PDF of the menu.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| A PDF can't get the user halfway through the delivery process
| before seeing the soups.
| dugmartin wrote:
| I agree. There are lots of free AstroJS themes for restaurants
| that generate static html that you can host somewhere like
| Firebase hosting for free.
|
| - https://astro.build/themes/details/astropie/
|
| - https://astro.build/themes/details/astrorante/
|
| - https://astro.build/themes/details/tastyyy-restaurant-
| websit...
| adzm wrote:
| I love Astro; there is so much you can do with it.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I agree with no JS, but why PDF over HTML? Hard-wrapping for
| letter-sized paper (ok, a PDF doesn't need to be letter-sized,
| but most menus are approximately that) with crapshoot reflow
| options for soft-wrapping in certain viewer apps is pretty
| dicey on a phone, mitigated only slightly by rotating the phone
| sideways.
|
| The only benefit I can think of is if it leads to more frequent
| updates by the restaurant, due to limited skillset.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| The complexity between the modern web and a pdf is marginal.
| PDFs do get printed for menus. Editing a PDF and uploading it
| to the site, integrating prices and syncing between the site,
| online ordering, PDF menus is just part of the business.
| There are lots of platforms that help with this such as
| Slice.
| cess11 wrote:
| The soup shows for me without JS.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| No one is browsing the internet without JS today (within margin
| of error). Whether or not this "should" be the case, it is.
| fullstacking wrote:
| To be fair this project uses zero 3rd party npm modules for
| runtime. The total runtime JS it uses is 1.76kB in size.
| pimlottc wrote:
| PDF is a terrible experience on mobile
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| PDF is an enormous pain in the tits to view on a phone and has
| significant accessibility issues for people using assistive
| technologies.
|
| It's not even about blind people. People with ADHD or dyslexia
| use assistive technology, which frequently makes an absolute
| horlicks of interpreting PDF. It's one of the reasons I'm
| trying to move a lot of documentation at work away from PDF and
| onto just straight HTML.
|
| Plain old HTML, with thin CSS on it to make it not be black-
| and-white Times New Roman. Kicking it oldschool.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| PDF:s are not great on mobile. And you can't easily translate
| them (I often translate restaurant menus when they are on a
| website with just 2 clicks)
| codewritinfool wrote:
| Link at the bottom of your example page results in 404. For me,
| anyway.
| fullstacking wrote:
| ah yeah, sorry work in progress. There is a link to the repo
| https://github.com/Local-Cafe/localcafe-lite
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I'm getting NXDOMAIN, and various online resolution tools [0]
| show the same.
|
| [0]
| https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=a%3alocalcafe.or...
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| It's pretty sad how there doesn't seem to be any decent free
| options for websites which are easy to use. Squarespace and such
| cost a fortune which isn't worth it if you aren't trying to run a
| full ecommerce site. Plenty of services offer free hosting of
| static content but don't have any way a normal person can use
| them. Having to use a static site generator is too hard for non
| programmers.
|
| I'm just surprised we haven't seem some app that can act like a
| wordpress admin page but generating a static output you can host
| for free or very cheap somewhere.
| miladyincontrol wrote:
| A webapp or gui WYSIWYG static generator with basic git support
| abstracted away would go far for many. Just let it push to some
| private repo which cloudflare pages or similar would deploy off
| of.
|
| It really feels like the only part of a non-static site most
| want is an editor. I absolutely loathe the matter but I do see
| why some restaurants only maintain a facebook page for their
| online presence.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| Not exactly what you're asking for, but this is nonetheless
| an interesting approach: https://getpublii.com/
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| I'm building something like this...
|
| NextJS + Git + Vercel.
| weitendorf wrote:
| This is exactly what we're trying to build with
| https://github.com/accretional/statue - you can email me or hit
| me up on Linkedin to get early access to our free static site
| hosting (which our new site for the project at
| https://statue.dev runs on, and which will Soon(tm) have a
| public-facing product doing exactly what you just asked for)
|
| Basically you'll be able to edit the markdown for your site in
| a souped up version of our lightly reskinned vscode IDE at
| https://brilliant.mplode.dev and instantly publish/preview the
| changes in the same browser tab in a pane. Brilliant comes with
| a full Linux environment running in a container on our cloud
| platform, and building a Statue static site is already a one-
| command operation. The little UI we're working on let's
| nontechnical people skip that and just edit files and click
| buttons to make changes and publish it, though.
|
| Here's a one-liner that will get you an entire static site with
| content (not the landing page yet, though) you can edit via
| markdown:
|
| yes | npx sv create . --template minimal --types ts --no-add-
| ons --install npm && npm install statue-ssg && npx statue init
| && npm install && npm run dev
| jarofgreen wrote:
| > I'm just surprised we haven't seem some app that can act like
| a wordpress admin page but generating a static output you can
| host for free or very cheap somewhere.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44391535
|
| (I'm not affiliated with it)
| fckgw wrote:
| Squarespace is like $20/mo for a basic site promoting your
| Brick and Mortar business. That includes domain, hosting, and a
| template/CMS. It's not that pricey.
| tomp wrote:
| how about something like feather.so? publish a website / blog
| from your Notion...
|
| haven't used it, but looks like a great idea!
| bhelkey wrote:
| A couple of things:
|
| First, the site generator is MIT licensed but I don't see a link
| to the license. If someone forks this generator, would they be in
| compliance with MIT license requirements?
|
| Second, the images linked in this site are quite nice. I can
| imagine someone choosing to use some of them as is. Are they
| yours to share?
|
| Third, it appears that you are targeting non-developers. I would
| think about how to make it as easy as possible to customize.
| Decisions like putting images in "priv/output/images" seems a bit
| confusing.
| fullstacking wrote:
| First: https://github.com/Local-Cafe/localcafe-
| lite/blob/main/LICEN...
|
| Second: pixabay
|
| Third: Yeah that's the challenge I'm working on at the moment.
| Thanks for the feed back.
|
| I do plan on cleaning up the repo so that you are not starting
| with the example and also plan on making a small tutorial video
| to show how much effort it takes to setup.
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(page generated 2025-12-02 23:00 UTC)