• Database
• Static Files
• Creating Content

Static files vs database-backed blogging systems

• March 2007 - Brent Simmons - Imagining a Node Blogging System for Geeks
• March 2011 - Brent Simmons - A plea for baked weblogs
• July 2002 - Aaron Swartz - Bake, Don’t Fry

Database

I prefer the database because it's easy to write, read, and search. The database is good for frequent posting like I do, especially with the "notes" or microblog posts.

And I want the wiki-like features, such as double-bracket case to create links to articles, versioning, differences, redirects, and template includes even if I don't use these features every day.

I guess Junco-powered JotHut.com is less of a blogging system and more of a publishing app. It's my personal content management or knowledge management system that is used to store many types of text content, such as ideas, opinions, notes, and recipes.

And I want to be able to create and edit notes and articles from not only my laptop but also from a tablet, dumbphone, and smartphone.

I'm not concerned with traffic. I want a place that easily stores and retrieves information that interests me.

Static Files

For infrequent blogging or publishing, like once a day or only a few times a week or month, then I could see the acceptance of a static site generator.

This type of app may only work well when using a desktop/laptop. For a static site blogging app, can a user create or edit posts on a phone or tablet?

With static systems, it would be easy to migrate the content to another server. I assume the markup would be copied. Maybe the HTML too, but as long as the markup and maybe a date stamp for each post has been preserved, then it should be simple
It seems that static site apps require too many steps to publish an article.

Creating Content

To publish a microblog or note at JotHut, which uses my Junco code:

1. enter text into small textarea box on the homepage
2. click the post button

To publish a blog or article at JotHut:

1. click the hamburger icon
2. click the post link
3. enter text into textarea box
4. click the post button

It would be three steps to create a blog post if I left the post link in the nav bar across the top of the site, instead of burying nav bar options within the slide-in menu. I wanted to simplify the look and remove links. That meant one additional click or tap by hitting the hamburger icon.

If I want to create or edit an article with the advanced writing area, then I need to add one additional step: click the split link.

#blogging - #design - #programming - #blog_jr