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0 pointsmarcamillion12y ago0 comments

It's awesome that it has an ORM - but ever since I have started using Octopress, which is based on Jekyll, is the more I realize that we don't need a DB for 'just blogging'.

Plain, old, generated HTML works perfectly. Plus it is very easy to host.

If this is something you guys can implement, I would suggest looking at it.

Your hosting will be MUCH simpler, cheaper, more profitable (even though you say you are running a non-profit), general footprint will be smaller, and pages will load quicker.

That's just my $0.02.

I love what I see here, but I can't bring myself to going back to a db-powered blog from Octopress.

The day you guys implement something similar, you will have 1 more user though!

Either way....awesome execution and congrats on everything you guys have done. Love it so far.

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7 comments · 3 top-level

Xylakant12y ago· 4 in thread

> is the more I realize that we don't need a DB for 'just blogging'.

That works for you and me (we're using jekyll here) but not for people that want timed releases and an online editor. Comments will need some sort of database as well, so you'll have to rely on disqus or similar if you're running a static blog.

marcamillionOP12y ago

Ahhh....you are right. Good point.

Comments (outside of Disqus), timed-releases and online editor. Interesting. I can see that.

Touche12y ago

Why can't you do static generation from an online editor?

Xylakant12y ago

Because you need to write somewhere. Now, you can write to the filesystem if you really really want to, but only if there is a writable FS somewhere - so e.g. not on heroku - but in any case writing to the FS and then serving that document is a whole can of worms.

1 more reply

pingswept12y ago

You can. I've done this using a different web editor based on CodeMirror: https://github.com/rascalmicro/red

I do suspect that Xylakant may be right elsewhere in this thread when she points out that it's not possible on Heroku, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I would love to see Ghost use a pile of static Markdown files rather than a database for posts. Then, in a couple of years, when I want to use something else, I can take my pile of Markdown files and move along.

jacques_chester12y ago

I'm a half-way house person when it comes to CMSes and databases. I don't think raw content needs to go in the database, it can happily live on the file system (assuming a sane permissions regime) and you can delegate version management to git.

However I feel metadata and other structured data belongs in the database for the usual reason: to support unforeseen future queries. That is, to make plugins and widgets easier to develop and better performing (vs, for example, iterating over every post or every comment to perform some calculation).

taylorbuley12y ago

One problem I have with static HTML basic CMSes for non-personal publishers is that it can be a pain to migrate markup or templates if not rendered client-side.

If you've got thousands of pages, publishing a HTML change could require re-building of all static pages, which means it can be painful maintain once you get to a certain scale.

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