Hacker News: erquhart

New comment by erquhart in "This is a teenager"

erquhart — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 18:08:02 +0000

> College isn't just a place that teaches you how to do a job; it's also a safe, structured, and productive environment for people to continue growing up – and to fend off adulthood for a bit.

This is actually a problem.

> in developed countries, there is an era between ages 18 and 25 when we collectively agree to let people explore the world and figure out what role they want to have in it. He calls it "emerging adulthood". And college is an environment built for emerging adults – a place where kids can leave their family environment and finally have a chance to independently shape their futures.

This is a wholly inaccurate description of college.

New comment by erquhart in "Netlify raises $53M Series C as microservices approach to web development grows"

erquhart — Sat, 07 Mar 2020 18:13:43 +0000

Couple of clarifications:

- Netlify is multi-cloud: https://www.netlify.com/products/edge/

- Content from a headless CMS like Contentful is generally retrieved at build time, not rendered in the browser

New comment by erquhart in "Medium suspended our account and blocked access to all our published stories"

erquhart — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 16:47:15 +0000

There's a tool called staticman - it doesn't integrate with Netlify CMS (yet), but it's a great git-based comments solution: https://staticman.net/

New comment by erquhart in "NetlifyCMS 1.0, Git-based content management to static sites"

erquhart — Fri, 08 Dec 2017 19:25:13 +0000

Yep! Hit the docs website and click "Get started": https://www.netlifycms.org/

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 00:02:52 +0000

The CMS is specifically made to work with Git, because so many developers are already using it for the rest of their site development. That said, it's not impossible to write a non-git backend, but it's heavily bent that way at the moment.

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 23:28:30 +0000

Preface: Netlify is a platform that enables static development, while Netlify CMS is an open source project created by Netlify.

In a broad sense there's nothing that can't work with the CMS - you can integrate a Mailchimp sign up form in your template and never have the CMS touch it. Beyond that, reach out in the spectrum community for help with a specific use case: https://spectrum.chat/netlify-cms

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 22:47:50 +0000

No documentation for this yet, but here's the PR to add the file system backend: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/pull/786

We have a lively community on Spectrum if you have questions: https://spectrum.chat/netlify-cms

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 21:20:04 +0000

Shouldn't have said "systematic", didn't mean to insinuate a collaborative effort. Silently down voting is what I'm pointing out, as it tends to be non constructive, I don't think I'll ever get used to that.

That said, my comment was ultimately pointless and I regret making it, agreed.

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 17:48:31 +0000

Asset storage integrations are supported, but it’s very early. That’s one area where we expect to strengthen after 1.0 drops in December.

That said, you don’t need a direct integration to work with a service - you could upload files to a service and enter the url into the cms as a stopgap.

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 17:45:12 +0000

Yes, the backend system is actually pluggable, so anyone can write one to fit their use case.

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 16:58:11 +0000

Yep, the source of a widely useful CMS will always be non trivial - but you have to build your site inside of a traditional CMS, where it lives on a server. Netlify CMS is a page on your site that creates and edits markdown and data files. The difference is real :)

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 16:54:14 +0000

Odd that this and other comments in favor of the article are being systematically down voted.

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 16:51:58 +0000

I definitely weighed that out, and I appreciate you mentioning it. I settled on this title because it's accurate for the implementor, and because folks are having a hard time understanding the benefit compared to a large solution like WordPress, as evidenced in this thread.

You can literally tack this CMS onto your existing site with a trivial amount of (configuration) code. You cannot in any sense do that with a traditional CMS. I'd call it tongue in cheek for sure, but I don't agree that it's a lie. Just a matter of perspective. Glad you like the project!

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 16:38:56 +0000

It's meant to be implemented by a developer, but it doesn't take much skill, and can be hosted for free on a number of services. I was a champion of Netlify well before I became an employee, so I still shamelessly plug them as the way to host static.

Regarding what we're committing, it's definitely human friendly, mostly markdown, or else json/yaml/toml/etc, nothing crazy. It's a completely legitimate use, same kind of data that GitHub's own Pages product uses.

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 16:04:04 +0000

Cost isn't the big issue, there are plenty of ways to do it for free. I'm curious why you think this is against GitHub's TOS? We're creating commits and pull requests via their API, which is exactly why the API exists, programmatic interaction with the service.

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 15:31:57 +0000

Yep, we're managing Git content through their API, which is exactly the kind of thing the API exists for. There are working PR's for open for Bitbucket and GitLab backends too, those will be out soon.

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 15:30:53 +0000

It's actually great for highly complex, high traffic setups as well - Smashing Magazine was a conglomerate site using Wordpress, Kirby, Rails, and Shopify, and are now entirely static (10x faster literally) and using Netlify CMS for content management. If you haven't checked out their site lately you should!

https://www.smashingmagazine.com

https://www.netlify.com/blog/2017/11/21/smashing-magazine-is...

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 15:24:23 +0000

Post author here: As others said, it's a CMS for static site generators.

Traditional CMS's are opinionated server side applications that live outside of the site developer's workflow, and are subject to maintenance and a high potential for getting hacked. The advantage is eschewing all of that for a hackable React app that literally lives on a page on your site, and gaining the speed and security benefits of static development.

To better understand the methodology, check out https://JAMstack.org.

New comment by erquhart in "A CMS with no server and 18 lines of configuration"

erquhart — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 15:05:09 +0000

Post author here: There's definitely no shortage of options - the CMS exists to fill a very specific trifecta that we believe are critical for modern static development. It is:

1. Git based, which is how devs are working increasingly

2. Highly extensible, from backends to editor plugins

3. It's open source

As a bonus, it's very easy to hack on - just a single page app written in React.