static-sites 5

This morning, I migrated my Tools in Data Science course page from Docsify to Hugo using Codex. Why? Because Docsify was great for a single term. For multiple terms, archives became complex. I still could have made it work, but it felt like time to move towards a static site generator. I don’t know how Hugo or Go work. I didn’t look at the code. I just gave Codex instructions and it did the rest. This gives me a bit more confidence that educators can start creating their own course sites without needing coding or platforms. Soon, they might not be stuck to LMSs either - they can build their own. ...

Here’s the GitHub Actions file (.github/workflows/deploy.yaml) I use to publish to GitHub pages. name: Deploy to GitHub Pages on: # Run when pushed. Use { branches: [main, master] } to run only on specific branches push: # Allow manual triggering of the workflow workflow_dispatch: # OPTIONAL: Run at a specific cron schedule, e.g. first day of every month at 12:00 UTC (noon) schedule: - cron: "0 12 1 * *" permissions: # To deploy to GitHub Pages pages: write # To verify that deployment originated from the right source id-token: write jobs: # Run as a single build + deploy job to reduce setup time deploy: # Specify the deployment environment. Displays the URL in the GitHub Actions UI environment: name: github-pages url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }} # Run on the latest Ubuntu LTS runs-on: ubuntu-latest \ steps: # Checkout the repository - uses: actions/checkout@v4 # Run whatever commands you want - run: echo '<h1>Hello World</h1>' > index.html # Upload a specific page to GitHub Pages. Defaults to _site - uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3 with: path: . # Deploy the built site to GitHub Pages. The `id:` is required to show the URL in the GitHub Actions UI - id: deployment uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4 This is based on Simon Willison’s workflow and some of my earlier actions. ...

Github offers Github Pages that let you host web pages on Github. You create these by adding a branch to git called gh-pages, and this is often in addition to the default branch master. I just needed the gh-pages branch. So thanks to YJL, here’s the simplest way to do it. Create the repositoryon github. Create your local repository and git commitinto it. Type git push -u origin master:gh-pages In .git/config, under the [remote "origin"] section, add push = +refs/heads/master:refs/heads/gh-pages The magic is the last :gh-pages.

I moved from static HTML pages to web applications and back to static HTML files. There’s a lot to be said for the simplicity and portability of a bunch of files. Static site generators like Jekyll are increasingly popular; I’ve built a simple publisher that I use extensively. Web apps give you something else, though, that are still useful on a static site. Access control. I’ve been resorting to htpasswd to protect static files, and it’s far from optimal. I don’t want to know or manage users’ passwords. I don’t want them to remember a new ID. I just want to allow specific people to log in via their Google Accounts. (OpenID is too confusing, and most people use Google anyway.) ...

My site actually has pretty bad design against these parameters. Need to work on it. Besides, the time is up for static sites. Dynamic website design will rule. Wonder when Geocities will start offering these features.