During the last week I have been reviewing concepts from the world wide web. HTML was my first topic, then I moved to CSS. They are really delightful topics and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I wanted to learn how to build web pages since I was basically a young teenager (14 years old) and now I am literally reliving that dream, both with the autonomy of time and attention direction as well as more abundant resources to do whatever I want. In this short post I will describe the findings of my initial exploration of the world of static website generators. These are software frameworks that allow to generate static websites (mostly based on HTML and CSS) that don’t require a web server or a database. For my personal website I am using a template create by a CSS proffesor of a Hawaian University. The template is based on Jekyll, semantic UI and JSON resume. Since Jekyll is the first framework I explored I will start with that one.

Jekyll

Jekyll is a framework that allows you to generate static web sites and blogs. It is the main framework used as a foundation for this website. The framework was created in Ruby, using additional tools such as thhe Liquid template engine and Markdown as the markup language for text files. You can find more information in its official page: Jekyll. Here are some interesting templates themes I found on the web while looking for inspiration to improve my own blog section:

• Parchment
• No style please
• Jekyll shell theme
• Chirpy

They all have different features and traits. They also offer tons of ideas that will make your site look and feel better (better UI and UX). Initially I was introduced to the main components of Jekyll with this awesome tutorial. One of my main takeaways after reading the whole text is that playing with static web generators such as Jekyll or Hugo (next section) can help you become more familiar with the basics of HTML and CSS. JS can also be used to take advantage of all its power and flexibility.

Hugo

Hugo is an alternative to Jekyll I found when reading an article about a guy who has been living the pandemic while programming (Javascript mostly) and using this entertainment as an escape from the hardships and absurdity of the times. The framework looks really playful and presents itself as the fastest framework to build websites. I will leave the link to the official site here in case I want to dig more into the topic in a future date. At this point in time (April 8, 2021), the options for static website generators are quite overwhelming. Hugo and Jekyll are part of the top 5 frameworks, with Next.js, Gatsby and Nuxt being the other three. See more here.

Final comments

The world of the internet and computers is something that really excites me and move me forward to learn and explore new topics. During this exploration I improved the blog section of this site and also learn the basic architecture of frameworks of these kind. I also found that frameworks like Jekyll or Hugo impose a lot of restriction during web development since the idea is to develop a web site with basic tools such as HTML and CSS, while avoiding more complicated ones such as JS frameworks, databases or servers. I like the idea a lot. I also understand that the current web is a mess. It is full of noise, JS scripts, ads and complexity. Coming back to the simple side of the web is something that appeals to me.