Re:How my life was changed when I began caring about the peo...
by jmccree on Thursday January 08, 2015 @06:33PM
(#8859760)
Using nginx/varnish as a caching reverse proxy in front of apache/php is rather common. You get all the ease of use of Apache (mod_rewrite instant .htaccess rule changes, mod_php, etc.) , ability to use whatever cpu intensive plugins/code you want in your application, and once the page is cached it loads instantly for as long as you cache it. Nginx can be configured to serve static assets directly or your app can use CDN links.
I've never really understood the recent fascination with static site generators. I get that it's neat you can upload just everything to S3 and host it there with no servers, but then if you want to change something site wide you have to reload everything. Dynamic app + with caching reverse proxy + optional CDN is a tried and true method. I've been on projects that use this method with small VMs to power sites with tons of traffic.
Re:How my life was changed when I began caring about the peo...
by cbhl on Thursday January 08, 2015 @07:24PM
(#8859972)
I've had strong recommendations for nanoc and middleman. Additional static site generators can be found all over; one good resource is this list: http://blog.iwantmyname.com/2014/05/the-updated-big-list-of-...
Since the content of my site only changes a couple times a month I started migrating away from towards a static solution. I'm not trying to say WP is bad but I think if your content is relatively static and you aren't doing a ton of updating, just make it static HTML instead of doing hacky cache stuff. It's simple, secure and runs on any type of server.
The only thing that's lacking right now is a really solid static site generator. Octopress/Jekyll are good solutions but can be a bit frustrating and not very portable.