wonders of

the static web

 

 

Nabil Kashyap / nkashya1

Digital Scholarship Librarian

Swarthmore College

static vs

dynamic

  • client side processing
  • preformed
  • stable
  • document based
  • portable
  • "simpler"
  • fewer server calls
  • think 90's-looking websites
  • server side processing
  • request generated
  • database query driven
  • security issues
  • performance issues
  • blogs like WP, Drupal, etc.

static site generators

Dynamic websites build with each request. Static site generators build only when the data changes.

What is Jekyll?

  • A Ruby Gem that ...
  • ... parses plaintext files ...
    • HTML
    • Markdown
    • YML
    • json, csv, etc.
    • CSS/SASS
  • ... and automagically generates HTML 

Why Jekyll?

  • There are (many many) others!
  • Largest user community (so far ...)
  • GitHub support

Yes, but how?

$ gem install bundler

$ cd project-directory

$ bundle install --path vendor/bundle

$ bundle exec jekyll serve

$ bundle exec jekyll build

 

 

GitHub Pages

  • Theme chooser
  • Supported gem themes
  • Or use any theme

Copy files to a server

$ scp -r _site/* user@host:/www

But why?

  • Flexibility of liquid templating
  • Ability to parse data
  • Plugins and extensions
    • Searching
    • Mapping
    • Filtering

 

thanks !

 

 

Nabil Kashyap / nkashya1

Digital Scholarship Librarian

Swarthmore College