Which Static Site Engine would make the most sense, if one was to make an online shop with dynamic content using e.g. Snipcart as the shopping cart?
I hooked Snipcart up to Jekyll and I've seen implementations using other static site generators as well, but I'm thinking the generator should either be light (as in capable of building fast) and/or just able to build dynamically (which most really aren't).
By dynamic content I mean the site should update/refresh fairly often, depending on e.g. warehouse content (limited edition counter - only 10 items left, then 9 etc.) and timed offers (e.g. 12 hour sale of an item) ?
I took a look at Broccoli-Taco since it has "Dynamically generated pages based on data", but I've yet to get it working (not given up yet).
However, static site generators are very new to me and thus I've come to this place of great guru's and wanted to see if anyone here has any good input ?
We've also had problems trying to use Broccoli-Taco for the first time this morning :confused: I work at Snipcart and we wanted to try it and see if we could maybe write a blog post about it.
However, we tried quite a few static site generators and we really love them ;) Here are some generators we liked:
Hugo is a static site generator written in Go, the compilation time is the fastest that we tried, and their documentation is awesome. I think it might be my favorite!
Roots is a static site generator in NodeJS, works very well, compilation is not as fast as Hugo but it still rules! Their documentation is also very well done and it's backed by Carrot, a nice agency in NYC so it should be more maintained than Broccoli-Taco.
Middleman is a static site generator in Ruby, similar in some ways to Jekyll. Works very well!
We have blog posts on Snipcart's blog for each of those static site generators, they might be useful to get started:
Static Site E-Commerce: Integrating Snipcart with Middleman
Static Site E-Commerce (part 2): Integrating Snipcart with Jekyll
Static Site E-Commerce (part 3): Integrating Snipcart with Hugo
Static Site E-Commerce (part 4): Integrating Snipcart with Roots
One last thing: you should really take a look at Netlify. These guys are running an awesome service that makes static sites hosting a breeze! Whenever you push updates to your website, update your data files or anything, they will automatically redeploy your site in seconds! We used Netlify a lot and it really rocks.
Related
I am converting a good old ASP.Net website to a single page application using Ember.js in a ASP.NET Web API project.
All the devs of my team and myself are pretty new to javascript. We spent the last 2 weeks learning the basis and comparing SPA frameworks. I apologize in advance if my question sounds stupid :)
All the Ember tutorials I have found so far included all Handlebars templates into one single file. I assumed it would be pretty obvious to split them into separates files (*.hbs) when the time would come, but it's not. I might be totally missing something here, but I found about 4 ways to get my templates back when I need them. I'd like to know which method you would recommend:
Concatenate and then inject all the template files when the app loads. I could write some C# code on the server-side that concatenates all the templates files into a single one when the app loads (i.e. each time a visitor enter the app). It seems odd to me, in terms of processing, but also because the generated HTML file will be pretty heavy.
Load each template dynamically via Ajax when I need it. Pretty much what is done here. I kinda like this solution even though I haven't tried it yet. It makes sense to me to get asynchronously a template when I need it instead of loading the entire app on the first load.
Use the Bundling mechanism of Asp.Net MVC. I found stuff like csharp-ember-handlebars to precompile the templates on the server-side and return them as a single javascript file. It works-ish but I feel like the precompiled file will become pretty heavy as I add new templates.
Use Grunt with the plugin grunt-ember-handlebars to precompile the templates. I'm not familiar with Grunt but if I understand well all the devs working on the project will have to install Node.js + Grunt + learn how to use a command prompt + remember to run the command before each commit (if they modified a template). This is not obvious for the web designers. And adding grunt to the build actions will require the entire dev team (working on other projects) to have grunt on their machine (not acceptable).
I need to find a simple and elegant solution to address this issue. My project is in a solution with 35 other projects and I cannot add too much complexity to the build, neither depend on unstable libraries. Maybe I have been too optimistic when I thought I could use Ember for my project. Any suggestion would be welcome!
Your #3 is the most ideal (and common) way that I've seen applications handle templates. With a compiled and minified template file you really don't have to worry to much about performance problems in regards to adding new templates, especially if you take advantage of caching.
One benefit to having the templates compiled and available off-the-bat is that users only need to Download Your Resources Once™, as apposed to downloading resources for each subsequent page load. This leads to a fantastic user experience.
What would be good (cross Smalltalk, mantained, documented) web frameworks or packages (in terms of fewer things to learn/adapt) to use for implementing a static web site with really few forms? .i.e. : a search box and a contact form. I have no "model" or application behind, so I'm not searching for CMS or web application capabilities.
There is any example or simple script of a static web site developed in any web frameworks? please I'm NOT interested in counter or 'Hello World' examples. The examples I've seen from Seaside looks too complicated, too many nested blocks with the "programmatic HTML" and the ones I've seen from AIDA needed a model object, couldn't figure how to get something working without a model.
All Smalltalk web-servers (Zinc, Kom, and Swazoo) can serve static files. If you take Pharo 1.3, Zinc is already pre-loaded. Just look at the code, tests and comments and you should get a server running in no time.
All Smalltalk web-servers (Zinc, Kom, and Swazoo) can serve static files. If you take Pharo 1.3, Zinc is already pre-loaded. Just look at the code, tests and comments and you should get a server running in no time. (via Lukas Renggli)
Taking some performance hit, you can have Seaside serve content as though it was static.
What are the differences between the three Smalltalk web application frameworks?
Some starting points:
What is the sweet spot for each framework? in Which case would you use one or the other?
What are their weaknesses?
Which one has the cleanest URLs?
How do they handle Ajax?
Do they have some preference in their use of persistence?
I'm just trying to decide which framework is appropriate for each kind of application.
I can only answer for Seaside:
Target: Seaside targets complex web applications with focus on reusability and development productivity. There is automatic session state management and back-button support. The two free online books Dynamic Web Development with Seaside and Seaside Tutorial provide documentation.
Weakness: For RESTful URLs you have to do some extra work.
Clean URLs: For RESTful URLs you have to do some extra work, but it can be worth it (e.g. Pier).
AJAX: There are plenty of AJAX libraries integrated in Seaside (jQuery, jQueryUI, Prototype, script.aculo.us, ...). The integrations give you full access to these libraries from within Smalltalk. New libraries can be easily integrated, e.g. JQueryWidgetBox.
Persistency: Seaside is a web application framework, not a persistency framework. You can use whatever persistency solution fits you the best, e.g. GemStone, GOODS, GLORP, ...
Also see these other questions/discussions on StackOverflow:
What is the difference between Seaside programmming and other web programming
Is Seaside still a valid option?
I can say something on the Iliad side:
Sweet spot(s): It handles AJAX painlessly. For me, that was the turning point that made me switch to Iliad. Also, it's so small and non-bloated that you can read the whole code in a day and have a grasp on how it works.
Weaknesses: The community is also very small. This results in a lack of documentation, additional modules or pre-made widgets. OTOH, small communities tend to be willing to help each other more eagerly, so pretty much all your doubts can be solved by asking at the mailing list.
URLs: Well, since all calls in Iliad are AJAX by default, the URL stays clean the whole time.
Ajax: Yep. For free and by default. You just #markDirty a widget and it'll update automatically. Dependencies are as easy to define as sending #addDependantWidget: to a widget, so that when the first is marked dirty, both will be updated. Also, if the client doesn't have a javascript capable browser, all calls will fall back to regular HTTP requests automatically.
Persistence: No preference. Since the model is separated from the framework (I think this applies for the three frameworks) you can still follow the same guidelines you would for Aida or Seaside.
And for Aida/Web:
Sweet spots: Realtime web support out of the box, for both content websites and complex web apps, HTML5 and mobile support, web server included so it works immediately after installation, you can serve many virtual websites from the same image.
Weaknesses: lack of documentation, small community
URLs: clean REST-like URLs all the time, because Aida follows from the start the moto: every domain object can have its URL (also by Alan Kay) and domain object can even choose its URL by itself.
Ajax: Seamlessly integrated, you don't see it anymore, all is just there. To refresh some element on webpage you simply call e update. No need to know any jQuery or some other JavaScript. Same goes for realtime web apps as well. WebSocket protocol is default communication channel on supported browsers to exchange JSON messages between browser and Aida based server.
Persistence: Image based persistence with automatic snapshot every hour is turned on by default. Gemstone/GLASS support provided for the next step. Relational/other DB is a duty of domain level, if needed.
For more:
Comparison of Smalltalk web frameworks from Aida centric
perspective
ToDo example in Aida/Web shows the newest realtime web/HTML5
features, as part of Comparison by example initiative
For some persistency solutions for Seaside, there is a page. Most of the solutions there are independent of Seaside.
I see a lot of new websites lately which create automated content, most notable SiteGuruji and 7zoom:
http://www.siteguruji.com/site/youtube.com
Is there an application framework or text analysis framework available to create such sites? SiteGuruji is doing full SEO analysis of the sites as well. Is there an SEO analysis library available? How do I do such an analysis?
Sorry for the noobish question, but i am new to programming and thus I am not sure which direction to start in.
By SEO did you mean this section of the page?
http://www.siteguruji.com/site/youtube.com#seo_status ?
I don't think any frameworks are available for SEO... however you can check out NLTK for text analysis and natural language processing:
http://www.nltk.org/book
You basically need to write your own classes to scrape content from the site and third party sites and analyse it. I have not found something ready for this. Bits fom here and there, you can use.
Personally, I have created everything from scratch using zend framework as basis.
I am rather new to Sitecore and would like to know a bit more about the regular approach to a new project. I'm therefore willing to listen and try out some of the experienced Sitecore developers solutions. I have alot of questions, i won't ask them all. I am just very curious to the approach other people have.
What would be the best approach to start a Sitecore project?
How would you set your project up?
What will be your approach looking at the recycling of code in future projects?
In short: What experiences do YOU have (if you have worked with or are working on Sitecore projects) and how would you recommend other people to work with Sitecore.
Right now we are busy on building Sitecore blocks that we can just recycle in other projects but i know for sure there are 1001 handy tips and tricks out there. I hope we have some Sitecore pro's # stackoverflow that could help a bit.
Here is some general setup info, based on how we do things.
Subversion
This is not Sitecore specific but we set up our repository like this
branches - This is used for working on big updates to the site that may take a while. Say for example I wanted to update how all of the sidebars on the site worked, and this was going to take a few weeks to complete. What we do is create a new branch, and set up another sitecore instance for this dev branch and do what we need to do. When it is complete we merge it back into the trunk for testing and deployment.
tags - This is used for keeping a copy of code that will never be merged back into the trunk (that is the difference between this and branches), so for example when we deploy an update to a site we can create a tag of said code so we can go back to it if necessary.
trunk - The active code, anything checked in here should always be deployable.
The Trunk
This is where we are actively developing/fixing bugs, depending on which part of the project that we are on. We set it up something like this (as an example the project is called TheProject)
We keep our solution file at the root of this folder, this will reference the various libraries in the src folder as well as the web project in the website folder.
docs - A place to put documentation about the site. I strongly suggest that as you complete features/sections you write up a little guide about any special knowledge needed for it to work. So say I am working on a featured content box on a landing page. This box will automatically pull some content unless it is explicitly overridden. What I do when I complete something like this is I write a guide for the customer, using a lot of screenshots. I send the guide to the customer as well as put it in the docs folder. This both helps the customer train their staff, as well as helps new developers come up to speed with how things are done.
lib - This is where we keep any DLLs we are going to need to reference in our projects.
test - A place to put unit tests.
src - This is where we keep our project specific library code. So in here we would have a folder called TheProject.Library, and in there would be the visual studio project for said
web/Website - This is where we have Sitecore installed and is the root of the site. In here we have a project called something along the lines of TheProject.Web. In the project we add all of the general stuff like the web.config/layouts folder and so on.
General Sitecore Code Library
One the best things you can do is from the start setup a general Sitecore library that can be added onto over time. Then when you write any code for a project that is not only applicable to the project, you can add it there. It may seem obvious, but this will really help in the long term. You will end up with much more solid code, see link text .
So when we are done with all this we have something like this as a solution/project structure
TheProject (The solution)
TheProject.Library
TheProject.Web
MyCompany.SitecoreLibrary (our general sitecore library)
Tools
This is another general thing, but I find it can really help speed up Sitecore development. If you find yourself doing something over and over in Sitecore, using API write a tool to do it for you. This not only helps with solving whatever problem you are tackling, but also helps to get you more familiar with the API.
Resharper
This is more of a general .NET development suggestion, use Resharper(http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/index.html). I am sort of a a Resharper fan boy, it makes so many things with development easier and quicker. In my mind the biggest advantage though is how easy it makes refactoring code, which is really important to do over time to keep things clean and understandable.
I hope some of this helps.
Gabe
This is, as you said, quite a big question. Here are some of my thoughts:
Developing Environment
First of all when I start a new project I install Sitecore on my developing environment and I make sure everything works. Either during installation or after I place the databases on a separate SQL-server and change the connectionstring accordingly.
I open up Visual Studio and create a solution and include the files needed. I create some kind of HelloWorld rendering and try building the solution so that I can verify that everything is working as it should.
When everything is up and running I create a zip-file of the whole solution, including the data-folder. Now it is time to add this to some kind of version control system, in my case Subversion.
I add the zip-file to subversion and also add all files that I think will be changed during the project, usually I tell subversion to ignore the sitecore folder, this speeds up performance drastically when checking in files.
After I perform a commit-action the other team members of my project can check out the code and start developing (after unzipping the zip-file, off-course)
We all work towards the same database although this goes against Sitecore recommendations, we havent had any problems with this approach however items in GUI created/changed by one developer take some time before it is created/changed for all the others.
We could off-course develop several different projects using the same Sitecore installation but since almost all customers use different versions of Sitecore we have found this approach a bit cumbersome.
Often we set up an automated build-server but this is a whole other issue.
Reusable code and renderings
I would like to say that we create neat packages based on the same codebase that gets reused between projects but unfortunately we are not there yet. Today it is a lot of cut and pasting between solutions.
Uploading code to customer
This is done via sitecore packages, normally with some kind of dynamic selection for what files to include, say all ascx-files in a specific folder changed the last 5 days.
There you have it.
Take a look at this series.
Especially the component architecture part have increased our level of reusability.
When you create your Visual Studio's project in Sitecore's web root folder and you will keep all Sitecore's dlls files inside bin directory, don't forget to add to project's references all these files:
bin\ComponentArt.Web.UI.dll
bin\HtmlAgilityPack.dll
bin\ITHit.WebDAV.Server.dll
bin\Lucene.Net.dll
bin\Mvp.Xml.dll
bin\Newtonsoft.Json.dll
bin\RadEditor.Net2.dll
bin\Sitecore.Kernel.dll
bin\Sitecore.Logging.dll
bin\Sitecore.NVelocity.dll
bin\Sitecore.Zip.dll
Because when you CLEAN your project and you will have reference only Sitecore.Kernel.dll (in most of cases), you will lost most of dlls from bin directory!!