And here I was thinking PHP is definitely “the old fashioned way”.

There are tons of static site generators[0], and it’s fairly trivial to have a complex web app not require a hosted server since you can use local storage, web workers, Firebase, etc.

[0]: https://jamstack.org/generators/

TBH I find it completely wild that someone prefers PHP to a statically generated site (Assuming you can get away with statically-generated). Just serving static files is way way way faster than running a backend, not to mention all of the process efficiencies you get by not having to manage servers etc.

When I update my blog (statically-generated), I add an .md file containing the blog post, commit it to git, and push it to a git repo. A quick CI/CD build fires off which generates the HTML (~1 bash command in a docker container) and pushes the static files to a file server. Easy!

I guess it depends on how a person started off with web dev. I have always made personal web pages directly inside an .html or .php site. Instead of "##", I used <h2></h2> and so on. I don't code for a living so my practices will seem pretty archaic because there's no git, no Webpack or script minification/Gzip involved.

I remember starting an Android course ~9 years ago and then giving up within the first hour because I could not configure the Eclipse environment properly. I think the same would have been true of web dev if I had to set up a Docker container just to get to "Hello World".

HTML has that "just works" quality that kept me interested in learning.

If you want to work with html files, you can always add a CDN link to something like Marked: https://marked.js.org/ You can enter the text of your post in markdown but it will be rendered as html.

Running PHP doesn't necessarily mean "managing servers", that's what hosting providers are for. And static sites have their own limitations, so it's not that surprising that people prefer the flexibility.

Having php available opens many doors if you wanted to add something non-static even something small.

Not running a backend can be limiting and force external services for simple tasks.

I have picoCMS (php).

I just open my FTP, drop a markdown file, and that's it. No repos, no CI/CD, no nothing.

The normal way to publish is to point them (Netlify and alternatives) at a git repo and they pull, follow configured build rules, generating the resulting static site (then updating it whenever the repo sees new commits). This drop mechanism is likely just to draw people into the ecosystem by making it easily demonstrated, but clearly isn't a long term solution.

Iirc, Netlify was for jamstack...if I recall from their early marketing stuff on my emails.