[off topic] why do people want a static tiddlywiki?

[Ste]

Coming from a place of ignorance..
Why are so many people keen to change tiddlywiki into a static site? What are the advantages?
Is tiddlywiki not a static site? What's the difference?

[Adithya B]

I use TW primarily as a note-taking Zettelkasten like device. It makes sense that I write my blogs here as well. And render it to a static site (https://adithyab.in/) whenever I feel like.

A traditional static site is more accessible for others and easier for search engines to access. TW is not a traditional static website. Its different. Ill leave that explanation to others.

[David Gifford]

Static = flat webpage. If you want to go to another resource you leave the page. TiddlyWiki is not static in that it has tiddlers that can be opened and closed without leaving the page.

As bmad said, one plus is that flat webpages are easier for non-TiddlyWiki users to wrap their head around. A series of static pages functions like a typical wiki, like Wikipedia, without confusing new users.

And as bmad said, another benefit is for search engine optimization, so the content someone publishes has a chance of getting added to Google (and other search engine) search results.

[TW Tones]

Ste,

To me static means as others have said basically it is "unchanging". Thus it will not save changes to the server. The Author may regenerate and save change to the server manually, or in a somewhat automated way, which makes the site look like an interactive site.

To me there are only two clear and apparent advantages

• As every tiddler is a separate independent html page each is open to search engines.
• On the standard static site, links are changed to load the next static page
• All content is generated and in a sense a snapshot created that does not need rendering
• If the wiki is large it has a load time some consider unacceptable, despite being able to provide a startup splash screen
• This may affect search engines indexing or not favouring tiddlywiki sites, because load time is considered critical

My personal view is exporting to a static website is a sad waste of interactive features, 

• stops the users benefiting from 
• last state (eg marking something read) 
• Customisation
• History
• and a lot more
• Just makes tiddlywiki a static html site generator (great but limited)
• Breaks tiddlywiki single file wiki model as every tiddler becomes its own html page.

My solution would be

• Export separate static tiddlers only as they change for upload to the publishing site
• Ensure their internal links point to the full wiki so any link from a static page loads the full wiki
• Or selectively by design
• For very large sites consider a multi-wiki setup that is transparent to the user.
• If re-publishing tiddlers "posts and pages" elsewhere you can post the URL to the static page, as a landing page, knowing they then enter the interactive wiki if they have any further interactions.

I have not had time to do this yet, but will for my own business sites.

Advanced ideas;

• In a single wiki develop so we actually specify which links can go to another static tiddler and which should open, which interactive wiki.
• Provide a simple way to publish from one wiki, multiple interactive wikis along with all static pages with URL customised for links to static or interactive pages.
• Provide support so if someone wants a link / bookmark they can choose the static or interactive (Permalink).

I hope this helps

Regards

Tones

[Ste]

Thanks all for the insight.
So if there were a plugin (Google anaylytics plugin) which let Google treat each tiddler as it's own page and you had your wiki set to no edit AND your wiki was small so opens quick..