posting is easier than coding

something to consider about static site generation is the barrier for former tumblr users when they're staring at an html document trying to Post.

this is different from "posting". "Posting" (with a capital P) is a pasttime of former high-school shut-ins like me, the kind of people who were around for thwomp night, or remember the scalene triangle with a wistful sigh. many of this type of Poster migrated to cohost during its time... though, given that the current culture of the internet is less hospitable to the same kind of Posting of olde, many former Posters have pivoted to their own personal websites.

so, when a Poster is given a website, they might enjoy the novelty of it for a while, but then might tire of the whole "maintaining" part. but if, like me, the Poster decides they want to get more involved, so they can more easily Post without barriers, it gets a little trickier.

so the question is, 'what barriers are we talking about, here?'

well, let's go back to the tumblr example. you want to post, so you click "new post", type some bullshit, and click Post. it's quick and easy, and requires no extensive knowledge of html, and you don't need to paste in some template or another to get it done.

that is called a content management system, or CMS. there are dozens of different CMS to comb through, but speaking personally, it's a lot larger-scale than what i actually need. i don't want to maintain a database if i can help it - after all, neocities doesn't support php, and databases are what php is all about!

so i went completely past these CMS services and decided to make a custom javascript-coded front-end that mimics a posting form, so i don't feel intimidated by all the bits and bobs of a template.

what it does is lets me put values into fields and type in a big post box like your average blogging website. from there, javascript takes that, inputs your form values, and then adds paragraph tags to line breaks, then it copies it to your clipboard.

this hacky CMS does not support other types of markdown, so you do have to type your own italic tags, a href tags, whatever, but it's a lot better than coding straight-up in your usual text editor, IMO. the workflow is a lot less painful for me, and i feel less like i am fighting for my life and messing with all the little metadata fields by hand.

if you'd like to try it, the demo is here. feel free to try it out, save it and customize it, or whatever else, as long as you're doing it non-commercially. the javascript is rather clunky, sometimes requiring a refresh and some manual fixes, but it's done, and that's what matters to me, personally.