in praise of Nikola

[Gour]

Hello,

I'd like to share a short story about my (recent) encounter with
Nikola...

Being responsible for a web site of one non-profit organization which
currently runs 'classical' CMS (PHP, MYSQL,...), I had desire to move it
to something else/simpler.

However, I thought that having some kind of Web UI is must due to
'expertise' of few potential content creator. Coil CMS was one option,
but then I gave up on it and went looking for some other solutions.

In the meantime I've converted all the content (~200 posts) into
Markdown and put it into Grav.

However, seeing that it seems that I'm still the only content creator, I
wanted to not depend on PHP and have decided to use static site generator.

Of course, Nikola was No.1 consideration along with Pelican, although,
iirc, Nikola can do everything which Pelican is capable, but by
providing nicer UI/workflow.

Still, I wanted to give Hugo another try...it has 10x more star on
Github, few times more contributors, it is fast...so, in last two days I
put both Nikola & Hugo to some light testing.

To make the whole story short(er), I've concluded that despite
supporting plethora of markup formats, rst is the best option in Nikola,
although I've tested both Markdown and AsciiDoc(tor).

In Hugo, Markdown seems as natural choice, despite support for both rst
and AsciiDoc. The problem is that it uses Blackfriday which does not
support just 'plain' markdown, but some extensions as well, along with
GFM and mmark. At the moment I'm using Sublime Text 3 editor and finding
the proper package for Markdown markup was not an easy option.

The content of my 'old' site uses emojis quite a lot and that appeared
to be problem even in Grav CMS as well as in Hugo - having few
paragraphs of texts makes emoji paragraph not visible and
render-able while removing one paragraph above makes them
render-able. :-(

Another gotcha is the multi-lingual feature is not ready and based on
docs in the dev branch not very smooth, no support for Croatian (I just
completed few missing strings for Nikola) language (yet).

Moreover, there is issue which format to use for front-matter...there is
support for JSON, TOML and YAML. TOML seems to be more popular, but
editor packages for Markdown have support only for YAML front
matter...in Nikola the same thing is very simple and straightforward.

To summarize, after playing with both applications and writing few posts
and some issue comments, my conclusion is that Nikola is vastly superior
product...Yes, Hugo might be very fast, but to put all the required
features in order is quite complicated when even basic features like
multi-lingual site is not completed (yet), while, otoh, such things are
just a breeze in Nikola.

I've realized that Nikola has so many features which are also very
nicely, at least for the end-user, crafted and easily used which shows a
great taste from its designers.

So, I'm back ready to adjust front meta data and convert the site fully
to Nikola.

The world is strange place that such fine piece of software as Nikola is
not more widely used and/or more popular, but seeing on my own
experience it seems that we humans are (sometimes) foolish embracing
(more) complicated solutions.

However, my opinion is that having more themes available for Nikola
would certainly make it more appealing, so that's one area where I'd
like to contribute back.

Finally, I like that Nikola has (old-fashioned) mailing-list (available
via Gmane) and regular IRC channel providing live contact with the main
devs.

So, congratulations to all developers which work to make Nikola available for
all of us!!


Sincerely,
Gour

--
Even a man of knowledge acts according to his own nature, for
everyone follows the nature he has acquired from the three modes.
What can repression accomplish?

[Roberto Alsina]

As the guy that reads practically every blog post about someone trying to use Nikola: "There are no good themes" is the most common argument against Nikola.

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[Gour]

On Sun, 28 Aug 2016 21:36:16 +0000 Roberto Alsina
<ral...@kde.org> wrote:

> As the guy that reads practically every blog post about someone
> trying to use Nikola: "There are no good themes" is the most common
> argument against Nikola.

Hmm...that should change! I've noticed that part of Grav's popularity
lies in 'skeletons' which provide complete package along with some demo
content, so it's very simple to launch complete site, tailor it a bit
and be done.

Btw, will 8.0 make the process of creating themes easier and/or simpler?


Sincerely,
Gour

--
One who is not disturbed in mind even amidst the threefold
miseries or elated when there is happiness, and who is free
from attachment, fear and anger, is called a sage of steady mind.

[Chris Warrick]

On 28 August 2016 at 23:44, Gour <go...@atmarama.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Aug 2016 21:36:16 +0000 Roberto Alsina
> <ral...@kde.org> wrote:
>
>> As the guy that reads practically every blog post about someone
>> trying to use Nikola: "There are no good themes" is the most common
>> argument against Nikola.
>
> Hmm...that should change! I've noticed that part of Grav's popularity
> lies in 'skeletons' which provide complete package along with some demo
> content, so it's very simple to launch complete site, tailor it a bit
> and be done.

This is basically “make a GitHub repository for skeletons and get
people to make those”.

> Btw, will 8.0 make the process of creating themes easier and/or simpler?

I don’t think so. The simplest way to make a theme is to start with
(inherit) the base theme (or any other theme) and customize CSS files.
The base theme should make it possible to create something custom
without touching the HTML.

And you don’t need to edit *every* template file in most cases.

--
Chris Warrick <https://chriswarrick.com/>
PGP: 5EAAEA16

[Gour]

On Mon, 29 Aug 2016 09:22:35 +0200
Chris Warrick <kwpo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is basically “make a GitHub repository for skeletons and get
> people to make those”.

Indeed. ;)

> I don’t think so. The simplest way to make a theme is to start with
> (inherit) the base theme (or any other theme) and customize CSS files.
> The base theme should make it possible to create something custom
> without touching the HTML.

Is it true also for non-Bootstrap based themes?


Sincerely,
Gour

--
The humble sages, by virtue of true knowledge, see with equal
vision a learned and gentle brāhmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog
and a dog-eater.

[Chris Warrick]

On 29 August 2016 at 11:01, Gour <go...@atmarama.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Aug 2016 09:22:35 +0200
> Chris Warrick <kwpo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This is basically “make a GitHub repository for skeletons and get
>> people to make those”.
>
> Indeed. ;)
>
>> I don’t think so. The simplest way to make a theme is to start with
>> (inherit) the base theme (or any other theme) and customize CSS files.
>> The base theme should make it possible to create something custom
>> without touching the HTML.
>
> Is it true also for non-Bootstrap based themes?

The base theme is not bootstrap-based at all. It’s pure HTML and CSS.
If you want to use a framework other than Bootstrap, you have to
create your own templates that match this framework.

But if you don’t need any framework, it’s much easier. I made a custom
Nikola theme with:
* 260 lines of CSS (excluding whitespace)
* a little bit of JS
* two small patches to two template files
(will be published soon)