diff --git a/content/u/blog/how-to-sneak-in-a-static-cms/contents.lr b/content/u/blog/how-to-sneak-in-a-static-cms/contents.lr index fb05da1..c3448b1 100644 --- a/content/u/blog/how-to-sneak-in-a-static-cms/contents.lr +++ b/content/u/blog/how-to-sneak-in-a-static-cms/contents.lr @@ -44,3 +44,98 @@ to *save* something. With Django CMS Blog, you have the standard have to wait seconds. Depending on my distance to our blog this might take 1 second (Europe) or about 5 seconds (South Korea). While this does not sound like much, it **feels** very long. + +While google apps (which we don't use for our blog) +like google drive (which has other issues as well) +take a different approach in *autosaving*, this also blocks if you +have a weak network link. + +While it is just a few seconds, it is a huge difference between just +being able to write in [emacs](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) +(yes I was converted from vim) versus writing in a browser, waiting +for the website to return. + +### Reducing latency + +While editing with "high" latency is a problem of the writer, latency +while loading the result is a metric that directly affects the readers +*feeling* about a website. If it takes too long to a website, you, +dear reader, are about to leave this website very fast. Even if I +write the greatest and best content, you won't like it. + +So by switching to a static CMS, the dynamic processing time is +removed and pages can load as fast as the round trip time (RTT) +between the web server and you. + + +### Reducing the inhibition threshold for writing blog articles + +Let's come to the third and maybe most important point: reducing the +inhibition threshold for writing blog articles. Let's put some +background into this: we are a small, Swiss based hosting company +loving open source. However, the emphasises is on **small**. + +So we cannot (nor do we want to ) afford huge marketing / adwork / paid +advertisements. But our strategy is to **do good and talk about it**. + +However if the barrier for writing and publishing is high, we won't +write much about the things we do. And I think with a static CMS, +geeks (like me) are having a much easier time to actually write a blog +entry. + +## How to do it + +Now let's have a look on how to sneak in a static CMS into an existing +company website. [ungleich.ch](https://ungleich.ch) is powered +by our [Django CMS](https://www.django-cms.org) +based CMS (full [source code is +online](https://code.ungleich.ch/ungleich-public/dynamicweb/)). + +The Django instance is running behind nginx, which allows us to proxy +different parts of the website to different backends and to serve +static assets directly from the filesystem. + +On the other hand we have a static web server named +*staticweb.ungleich.ch* that hosts various static pages. + +The existing URLs of ungleich.ch should all stay as they are without +any conflict. For this reason the new static cms is placed at +**/u/**. The static pages are generated on a client machine and are +uploaded using the following Makefile snippet: + +``` +BUILDDIR=../ungleich-staticcms-build +DESTINATION=ungleichstatic@staticweb.ungleich.ch:/home/services/www/ungleichstatic/staticcms.ungleich.ch/www/ + +all: publish + +publish: build permissions + rsync -av $(BUILDDIR)/ $(DESTINATION) + +permissions: build + find $(BUILDDIR) -type f -exec chmod 0644 {} \; + find $(BUILDDIR) -type d -exec chmod 0755 {} \; + +build: + lektor build -O $(BUILDDIR) +``` + +The last step to sneak in the CMS was to modify the nginx +configuration of ungleich.ch with the following snippet: + +``` + location /u/ { + proxy_pass https://staticcms.ungleich.ch; + } +``` + +## What's next? + +As you can see in this post, the design does not fully (*cough*) fit +the regular design of ungleich.ch. However Lektor uses jinja2, which +is very similar to what we already use in the +[existing dynamicweb +project](https://code.ungleich.ch/ungleich-public/dynamicweb/). + +If you want to join the discussion about this, I invite you to our +open chat on [chat.ungleich.ch](https://chat.ungleich.ch). diff --git a/templates/layout.html b/templates/layout.html index eff06a1..01abb36 100644 --- a/templates/layout.html +++ b/templates/layout.html @@ -1,16 +1,34 @@ - - -