Hello readers,
I migrated again from CMS, this time to a static page generator known as pelican.
I was already quite curious about the operation and performance of a static generator and after some tests I chose to use it. For those who follow the blog know that this is the second time I am migrating the tool, and worth an explanation of the reason.
My first choice as a CMS tool was drupal. I should start by saying that it is a really cool CMS, with a legible source code and all based on the modern Symfony framework. What motivated me to change it was its really horrible performance. Soon during the tests / development I realized that locally the CMS was running very slow, always choking on simple pages and tasks of little processing. I researched a bit and realized that it would not work well without a cache like OPCache. Obviously this is enabled by default on all recent PHP installs, so I did not see this as a problem.
It only turned out to be a real problem when I deployed to the hosting. The service offers php7 but no cache support (seriously this !?). I looked for the support and after some hits and backs with the support telling me that there was cache yes (Varnish only) they informed me that they could not activate OpCache and that I should buy a Cloud hosting, which cost about 12x the value I Had paid for the “simple” lodging.
As the hosting was already paid, the solution I adopted was to migrate from tool, to adopt the famous WordPress. At first it was all beautiful and wonderful, with pages loading really fast, while Wordpress has several out-of-the-box features far more attractive than Drupal.
After using WordPress for about 2 months, I began to realize the problems that it has. Besides the constant updates of the themes, plugins and core, there is still a certain slowness in data moments. There are also several security issues, and however much they are fixed, it is annoying to have to worry about updating constantly. If you look at the source code of WordPress you will realize that it is really confusing. I think this is one of the reasons for so many problems that the platform faces.
I chose to take advantage of what the hosting offered and use Varnish, migrating to a static generator.
But of so many options, which one to choose?
I came across this question and came up to a site with several of them being listed. As I was not sure exactly what I would meet, I set some requirements:
- Be updated with a reasonable frequency;
- Have an easy and complete documentation;
- Have an organized code base; (As much as I will not stick my hand in the code, it is important to note that a clean and organized code base is a good indication of fewer bugs and consequently less headache)
I started hunting and found plenty of options. Finally I chose to adopt the Pelican, because I found some interesting blogs that already used it and seemed to be working without major problems.
After a simple process of installation and configuration everything was ready for the writing of the articles. Now all I need to do is open a text editor, write some markdown, and run the generator.
Enough of worrying about slowness in hosting and with constant updates.
