I’m posting this into the help category in case I’ve missed something. If I have then will move it to the ideas cateogry.
I’m looking for the ability to do blogging with static html pages. I’m migrating OFF Wordpress for a bunch of reasons that I would hope would be obvious to users of Bootstrap Studio.
However, what I was looking for was a component / functionality that generated content from the Design > pages list (perhaps?) to save me manually creating the Table of Contents (TOC), blog roll, latest posts or the standard read more cards we use on our Wordpress installs.
Yes - It’s the key thing that we get from Wordpress and a data base but I have high hopes that the functionality can be mirrored in the offline editing (i.e. the database is there in BSS anyway so ??)
Since BootstrapStudio already has code to generate the sitemap and auto updates links when I rename or move pages around in the design view I saw this component would reuse that functionality?
Yes - I recognise we do all that in an active blogging platform like wordpress but after over a decade of dealing with bloated code, security issues and increased hosting load and poor performance from platforms like Wordpress etc etc I’m looking to go retro …
CONTEXT - For Example / Use Case
In my testing I’m using the bootstrap 5.3 Clean Blog theme/template (because - blogging)
Each post is created using the Design > Pages > Template Page and then post page template.
Whilst I tried to put posts in a sub directory (and then component would use that subdirectory as basis of list creation) I had issues with navbar. Separate issue.
On that page it asks if I want to add to menu - what if had an add to category list?
Bootstrap Studio is not really intended for maintaining blogs, but it can be done. If you are comfortable with writing code, you can use the Export Scripts functionality and generate a TOC automatically on export. This only works for basic blogs though, a dedicated CMS like WordPress will always be a better choice for things like categories, tags, multiple authors etc.
I’d suggest that you try designing a site in Bootstrap Studio, and then use a more capable CMS to manage your blog, like October CMS or a more lightweight CMS like Pico CMS or Bludit which have plenty of features and are easy to customise.
Guys, I’ve built literally hundreds of websites using Wordpress (and before that Joomla!, Drupal, Moodle and even OSCommerce back in the day).
And yes, I still use Wordpress for sites with multiple contributors and in cases where I want to run membership systems. But I don’t do shops anymore for a bunch of reasons.
BUT, for a blogger where they are not trying to build a membership roll or sell a product directly through their site etc, there is serious benefit from both a security, maintenance and performance perspective of maintaining site content offline and just hosting static files. In the end that’s what Wordpress ends up doing for you when you add Cache in an attempt to speed up the site.
I have operated a dedicated CPanel server for myself and clients for over a decade. My hosting accounts went from 50M/100M packages to 1G (and more)! over the last decade. On top of that, the page load speed of a Wordpress site sucks compared to static files.
In contrast a whole blog is about 2M as static files - that same blog with Wordpress and a “few” useful plugins and the like was requiring a 500M hosting account.
Hence my question…
Which in short was answered promptly by @martin (thanks) as a No - there isn’t a missing component or facility to handle blog rolls and the like - and if you need, it script it yourself.
And no - there will not be one - I ask for confirmation because I’ll be quoting you on that as the official position so I can make my product selection plans etc.
Firstly, see reply to Martin - Yep I’ve done what you suggest - I’m reasonably comfortable with BSS now - We’ve done 5 migrations of “simple” sites (blogs and brochures) in the last few days using the “Clean Blog” template. The initial Light house report on mobile and desktop looks great in comparison to the Wordpress (with w3 cache) originals!
Which is why I put my head up and asked about the two key workflow efficiency issues (the other was cut and paste) that we’ve been faced with before we start rolling out any more (or consider moving over to PineGrow).
I was hoping I’d missed something, as surely we’re not the only one hosting/maintaining “blogs” (and brochures) for clients who is fed up with bloat of Wordpress and the like.
i.e. I’m not using BSS to build towards Wordpress - I’m doing the opposite. I’m migrating off it.
Because of the number of sites I host, I don’t want code that I have to secure and maintain on my server. I don’t want server load from “active” platforms (i.e. CMS) either. I’d prefer to have all that happen on a desktop PC - I just want the “compiled” result for hosting.
With the reduction in size and load I go from 20 sites a server to 200. More importantly I don’t have to worry about Chinese/Russian hackers and the like doing drive by DOS. I don’t have to rely on my clients not having used the same Wordpress login credentials over on a charity or government site because it was easier (yes 2 factor is great, but non techs struggle still)
Fixing “that” starts to add up to real savings over time.
Hence the biz case for the request for functionality if it doesn’t yet exist.
ie. in short, I’m a commercial business owner, I’m not looking for features and easy of use - I’m looking at TCO, security and performance. I’ve seen the hardway that the majority of my clients don’t ever actually login to Wordress - they email us their content instead because they’re busy and non tech.
I think it will suite your needs. You can design in BSS (something the software lacks) and use Publii as a CMS and platform for online publishing (it has many options in this regard).
Obviously there is a learning curve (learning the templating language, and getting familiar with the software in general), but if I got what you want to achive, I really think this could work really good for you.
It must have a mobile login screen and interface so users can blog on the go on their mobile devices
It must use the Bootstrap Framework.
I have to be able to export and update from Bootstrap Studio anytime I need to update code. Completely fluid back and forth.
The only way I was able to achieve this was to integrate a CMS with Bootstrap Studio using Python and Python Beautiful Soup Html Parser. Convert everything after export to the CMS and move to proper folders. Not easy but can be done. (and thanks for the recent AI revolution for coders)
so I can make my product selection plans etc.