what me loves about static website generation
Thoughts on the power and flexibility of keeping blog sources local, under version control, and generated with Pelican.
There's a ridiculous amount of power and flexibility in having all the blog sources locally. You can use the text editor of your choice — a big help, given the quality of web-based editors in general. This also means the blog can live in a VCS, which acts as a form of backup when sources are pushed to a remote server.
Another advantage: you can do a heck of a lot of edits without being connected to the web. Drafting posts, tweaking templates, reorganising categories — all offline. That freedom changes how you approach writing.
cons
It's not all smooth. Static site generation introduces its own complexities:
- Setting up a generator like Pelican takes time — configuring themes, plugins, and deployment pipelines isn't trivial.
- You lose the instant feedback of a live CMS; previewing means running a local build step.
- Comments require an external service. This site uses Disqus for that reason.
Still, the trade-offs lean heavily in favour of static generation for anyone comfortable with the command line. The blog runs on Pelican with the Elegant theme by Talha Mansoor, and sources are hosted on Bitbucket.