Since I started converting parts of my website to use 11ty as a static site generator, I’ve been able to automatically generate tag and category pages that are *just there* as plain html files. And since they’re plain HTML, the old local site search engine I have on there still finds all the Eleventy-generated pages. And again since it’s all static, it doesn’t go down when the database does (which has been happening on an annoyingly frequent basis lately).

And this would be perfect if I was using a single Eleventy instance to build the entire site, but I’m not. I’ve got separate instances building the Les Misérables blog, the reviews, the tech tips, the creative writing collection, and so on, plus I have this WordPress blog and a bunch of hand-coded HTML from the old days.

Which leads to a few problems:

  1. Tags are per-section, not universal.
  2. The site search, which indexes html files on the server, sees everything except the WordPress posts, and the WordPress search *only* sees the WordPress posts.

Some ideas I’ve had to combine the tag pages:

  • Rebuild everything in a single Eleventy instance with a deeper hierarchy. Upside: Still static pages for everything except WordPress. Downside: Time-consuming, still leaves the main blog separate.
  • Write a post-build script that combines all the the tag pages from each subsite. Upside: Same. Downside: Need to either run on the server or make sure my local copies of the *other* subsites are current.
  • Write a server-side page that combines the backend HTML pages into a dynamic frontend for only the tag being viewed. Upside: simple. Downside: tag pages now depend on PHP.
  • Write some client-side JavaScript for the tag pages that will check whether other subsites have tag pages, and add those to the end of the list in a “See also…” section. Upside: simple, and the “local” tag pages are still usable as long as I make sure the script doesn’t block anything. I could even have it check the other static subsites first and then check the blog, so if the blog times out I still display everything else. Downside: requires JavaScript and additional network requests. But as long as I stick to vanilla JS, I can make it pretty small.

And for unifying the search:

  • Write a post-site-indexing script that adds the WordPress posts to the index. Could be done with direct DB access.
  • Write a pre-site-indexing script that generates a bunch of files for it to index. Seems like overkill.
  • Update the search code to send the same search terms to WordPress and combine the results.
  • Use a new search engine that indexes the served pages instead of the files on the server.
  • Point the search box at a remote search engine like Googl…yeah, never mind.

I haven’t settled on anything. I’m just kind of writing down ideas in public. If you have any suggestions, please let me know!

WP Tavern summarizes the conversation around WordPress losing CMS marketshare for the first time in ages, and what various people have cited as likely causes.

Personally, I’m finding its increasing complexity to be a major frustration.

  • Writing on WordPress has gotten somewhat more complicated.
  • Maintaining a WordPress site has gotten more complicated.
  • Developing for WordPress has gotten more complicated.
  • The resulting page code (including CSS and Javascript) has gotten a lot more complicated. As I’ve noted before, there’s no good reason to require 450K of data to display a 500-word post. Or a single link with a one-sentence comment.

The move towards Gutenberg blocks and full-site editing complicates things on several levels, and feels like an attempt at lock-in as well.

Ironically, I’ve been moving toward Eleventy, which has also been very frustrating…but only in building the layout I want.

On one hand…

  • I have to develop a lot of the components I want from scratch. More than would have thought. Though I suspect there are enough pre-built layouts out there for most people’s use cases.
  • The documentation is sorely lacking. (Eventually I’ll get around to helping with that.)
  • Dynamic features like comments need to be handled by another program.

But on the other…

  • I can fine tune things a lot more easily than fine tuning a WordPress theme.
  • Once I’m done building the layout, adding a new post is almost as easy as it is on WordPress.
  • My actual post content is portable.
  • There’s essentially no attack surface, so if I have a site that’s “done” I can just build it one last time and leave it as-is — and not worry about spam, maintenance or security (beyond general webserver security).
  • I don’t have to send extra JavaScript libraries along with every page, so it can use a tenth of the bandwidth and load faster on slow connections.

With Eleventy, setting up the layout and features has been super complicated…but once it’s set up, it’s smooth, easy to deal with, and does the job well. It’s kind of like running Linux back in the 1990s.

But with WordPress, there’s complexity in every layer.

Sometimes it’s worth it.

Sometimes it’s not.

Over the years I’ve written a lot of troubleshooting posts on my blog, describing problems I’ve run into and how I solved them in hopes that other people with the same problems might find it helpful.

I’m starting to collect them on a mini-site that’s not a blog: Hyperborea Tech Tips.

Several things came together to inspire me to reorganize those posts:

  • Tinkering with IndieWeb.
  • Building a Gemini capsule.
  • Opening the developer tools on one of my WordPress-powered blog pages. There’s no reason a 500-word article should need 400KB and a dozen connections!
  • Keeping multiple WordPress blogs up to date with security fixes.
  • Reading about the garden and stream metaphor. (via)

The essence of the garden and stream is that we’ve gotten used to a constant, time-based stream of information, but some things are better handled as an idea-based, organically-growing and cultivated collection. Sometimes you want to post a status update to social media (into the stream), but sometimes you want to update a Wiki page (taking care of the garden).

A lot of stuff isn’t here because it belongs in a stream. It’s here because it became more convenient than copying a template, writing the page, adding links and uploading everything over FTP.

I’d already mirrored some of these troubleshooting posts on my Gemini capsule, so I figured they’d be a good place to start.

My goals with the sub-site:

  • Deeper dive into Eleventy, the static site generator I’d used to archive my Les Misérables commentary.
  • Dig into IndieWeb.
  • Light as possible. One CSS file, images only for content, system fonts, no JavaScript unless I have a specific thing that needs it. (And if I do have to add JavaScript, only include the parts I need, not half a megabyte of some framework or another.)
  • Look somewhat decent (and legible!) on screens from cell phone up to widescreen desktops.
  • Create a reusable template, both for my own projects and for other people.
  • Be at least as useful as the original blog posts, if not more!