https://github.com/skx/static-site-generators

Early testing looks good, but like so many existing tools it mishandles symbolic links.

A user submitted a bug-report to draw attention to Middleman & Yeoman, but then closed it before I got round to looking at them.

https://github.com/skx/static-site-generators/issues/2

I'll try to find some time soon to add them, and work on the repository some more.

No explicit bias intended :)

In my opinion a user-friendly static site generator would require some kind of minimal GUI, dialogs to handle inserting images, and a smart set of predefined options to generate menus, listings, etc. Maybe even a one-click option to update an S3-hosted site.

If this doesn't exist, perhaps writing a GUI wrapper for an existing generator would be a worthwhile project.

* The Python program, not the CHICKEN Scheme static site generator of the same name.

Perhaps even a CMS-like thing that could be done online entirely?

http://bitworking.org/news/2013/05/piccolo_go

http://zoggy.github.io/stog/getting_started.html http://zoggy.github.io/stog/slides/2013_04_23_inria.html#%28...

A good application will write output that has a literal copy of the numbered version, and a symlink point to it.

Bad applications either ignore symlinks entirely, or change them to duplicate copies of files. (Which can be bad if you're considering a large file such as foo-latest-release.tar.gz.)

    .__            .___             __            .__  __  .__     
    |__| ____    __| _/____   _____/  |_  __  _  _|__|/  |_|  |__  
    |  |/    \  / __ |/ __ \ /    \   __\ \ \/ \/ /  \   __\  |  \ 
    |  |   |  \/ /_/ \  ___/|   |  \  |    \     /|  ||  | |   Y  \
    |__|___|  /\____ |\___  >___|  /__|     \/\_/ |__||__| |___|  /
            \/      \/    \/     \/                             \/ 
       _____                                             
      /  |  |    _________________    ____  ____   ______
     /   |  |_  /  ___/\____ \__  \ _/ ___\/ __ \ /  ___/
    /    ^   /  \___ \ |  |_> > __ \\  \__\  ___/ \___ \ 
    \____   |  /____  >|   __(____  /\___  >___  >____  >
         |__|       \/ |__|       \/     \/    \/     \/

If you contact the hakyll maintainer, jasper, for help, I'm sure he'd be more than happy to help you get it installed and usae.

I don't think that's a very common definition of "rich web application".

Previously I took it to mean "rich in interactivity". That's what I meant when I originally wrote that, a static site does not mean you can't have interactive content. IMHO the best way to write webapps is to have a static client that consumes an API provided by a standalone backend.

And now that you mention it, I have been looking for an excuse to learn Clojure...

[1] http://nanoc.stoneship.org/

Contributing to an existing architecture is definitely the way to go if what is already there is flexible enough to do what you need.

A proof of some kind of competency with the web stack.

Though hacker news isn't going to see either anytime soon because both are terrible. Still... it's a good learning experience.

I specifically wanted to apply the middleware concept to generating pages, which turned out to be a decent fit. It ends up being a very similar API to Express, so its instantly familiar to Node.js developers. Check it out.

Would love to talk about this stuff any time!

Makes sense to me though ... It's a natural fit for a front end dev who knows HTML/CSS/JS and also a good way to learn proper templating.