[callmeed]

This looks like a nice, Node port of Jekyll. Not really how I prefer to blog.

My idea for a blogging platform (maybe even a service), if I ever get to it, would be a combination of Jekyll and Posterous. In other words, you'd have:

* A Jekyll dir structure on the server

* You write a post via Email

* The email is POSTed to the service via MailGun

* The service writes a new HTML file in the Jekyll dir and runs `jekyll build`

BAM, you have the speed of a static site, the wysiwyg editing features of whatever email client you use, and the ability to post from any computer/phone/tablet (not just one with git configured).

[jacques_chester]

This is an example of what I call a POST-driven architecture; most designs are GET-driven.

GET-driven means that you need GET events to prompt the system to generate new pages and possibly cache them.

This has problems. The main one is that generating pages from scratch is costly compared to serving a flat file.

So we turn to caching.

But here arises a problem. GETs do not change content. So any system that relies on GETs as its source of activity will have inevitable mismatches between the cache and the content. This is where TTLs and LRUs and a whole bunch of other stuff comes into play.

What if, instead, we used a POST-driven architecture? Instead of relying on stochastic noise to determine what to do, we could rely on changing stuff when we actually receive the instruction to change stuff.

So instead of updating the cache on a certain number of GETs, or on a TTL or some other basis, we update the cache when a POST invalidates it. "Easy".

If you avoid the naive scheme that early versions of Movable Type used (rebuilding a whole site upon each post), the whole thing goes a lot quicker. And you get to keep comments.

In 2010 I did some preliminary research as part of an honours project proposal, but went with a different project. But it's still one of my pet peeves.

[alabut]

You just described pre-Google Blogger and everything I loved about it back in the day.

I was a huge fan early on in my career of using Blogger for both work and play. It was a really flexible generator of markup files - it didn't have to be HTML, so I'd use to make RSS/XML that would get piped into XSLT to make contact directories or into a Flash site for art projects, all while keeping an easy admin interface for various people to contribute their content.

I really wanted Blogger to succeed on its own. I took an Adaptive Path workshop with Ev when it was just him and Jason running things and begged him to take my money for a premium account. He said creating a Blogger Pro was a popular request and they were working on it, but then shortly after they got acquired by Google and it wasn't long before it went downhill, especially when it stopped being a static file generator and became a bad Wordpress clone (no plugins, for example).

That's what I love about Jekyll. What's old is new again and I'm pretty much trying to recreate that great setup from 5-10 years ago for my current projects. Content-centric sites want to be in HTML, not rendered on the fly by app/centric frameworks.

[don_draper]

>>* The service writes a new HTML file in the Jekyll dir and runs `jekyll build`

With Jekyll once it is up on say AWS you don't have to worry about it. You add a service in the mix, that means you need a server, that means you have an attack vector to worry about, among other things.

People like Jekyll because it is so simple. Once you start adding services, it's no longer simple.

[jacques_chester]

> With Jekyll once it is up on say AWS you don't have to worry about it.

You still need to update the base system.

[don_draper]

Right. But when a security vulnerability is announced for Apache, MySQL, Postfix, etc, I don't have to worry about it.

[jacques_chester]

We're going to wind up splitting fine hairs, but here goes:

Having to worry about updating because of security defects is the same as ... having to worry about updating because of security defects.

Reducing the attack surface still leaves an attack surface, is my point. You can't just "forget about it", your server can still be subverted to unpleasant ends.

[calgaryeng]

Give my weekend project a shot. www.snaphost.me

No email support at the moment, but automatically updateds markdown files in your Dropbox.