Work has continued on MakeStaticSite, the Bash utility to create static snapshots of websites, refine and deploy them — just through a single command.
Now at version 0.22.2 and available for download, recent updates include:
- improved support for search engines through the generation of a sitemap based on actual file output, matched in each web page by the canonical URL specified in the <head> tag. This sitemap is also cited by the site’s robots.txt file.
- more robust handling of workflow, so you can use MakeStaticSite in conjunction with other scripts at various stages, to undertake other management tasks, such as reviewing accessibility or link checking.
- more systematic treatment of options to clean WordPress ahead of being crawled by Wget. These small steps also point the way to broader support for fine-tuning CMS output.
- Support for deployment on Netlify Content Distribution Network, which is where the site is now hosted. It’s expected that other CDN could be handled similarly.
We’ve even updated the animation on the Home page, extending the SimTerm plugin in the process.
Now that MakeStaticSite has been used
successfully over a period of several months, it
has been placed under Git version control. I am
pleased to announce that I’ve created a repository
on GitHub
https://github.com/paultraf/makestaticsite
In surveying approaches to generating static sites, I have not been able to find anything similar, and there is a myriad of ways in which it could be enhanced. Compared with some Jamstack approaches, the performance is slow, but building this site, which is quite substantial, only takes a few minutes whereas the MakeStaticSite project site takes less than a minute. For most purposes, this should be fine.
The use of the command line is an obstacle for some, but there are various ways in which a GUI could be provided, even Web CGI, which might be security concern on a public-facing server, but far less so on a personal computer. The beauty of using shell scripts is that you can quickly achieve desired results without being tied to any framework. So, please give it a go!
This page was published on 8 March 2023 and last updated on March 8, 2023 .