81 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
81 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
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title: What is Lektor
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---
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summary: A brief introduction into what makes Lektor special.
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---
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sort_key: 20
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---
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body:
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When it comes to creating websites, there ludicrous amount of tools available.
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They range from full blown content management solutions like Drupal over
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desktop solutions like Google Web Designer to Cloud Hosted Website solutions
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like WIX to more programmer focused approaches like Jekyll which generate
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websites out of templates and markdown files.
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*Lektor is different than any of these.*
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## Lektor is Static
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Lektor learned from the huge range of static file generators like Jekyll,
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Pelican, Hugo, Middleman and many more about the values of generating a
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completely static website. This means that unlike WordPress or similar
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solutions it does not run on a server, but your local computer (or a build
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server) and generates out static HTML that can be uploaded to any web server
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or content distribution platform like S3 with CloudFront.
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Why go static? Because the vast, vast majority of websites will be read many
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more times than they will update. This is crucial because dynamic does not
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come for free. It needs server resources and because program code is running
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there it needs to be kept up to date for to ensure there are no security
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problems that are left unpatched. Also when a website gets a sudden spike
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of traffic a static website will stay up for longer on the same server than
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a dynamic one that needs to execute code.
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Sure, there are some things you cannot do on a static website, but those
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things you would not use Lektor for. For small dynamic sections, JavaScript
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and pairing up with other services is a good solution.
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<img src="static.png" alt="" class="screenshot">
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## Lektor is a CMS
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However Lektor also takes from content management systems like WordPress
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and provides a flexible browser based admin interface from which you can
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edit your website's contents. Unlike traditional CMS solutions however it
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runs entirely on your own computer.
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This means you can give a Lektor website to people that have no understanding
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of programming and they can still modify the content and update the website.
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<img src="admin.png" alt="" class="screenshot">
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## Lektor is a Framework
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Lastly however Lektor learns from experience in writing web frameworks. Lektor
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is much more than a website generator because it is based on a very flexible
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internal flat file database which can be used to model any website content.
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Unlike static blog generators which are based on some markdown content and
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“front matter” metadata Lektor's content is 100% configurable.
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If you have ever used a web framework like Django or Ruby on Rails you might
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feel right at home in how you can model and query your data.
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<img src="templates.png" alt="" class="screenshot">
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## Collaborate and Synchronize
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Lektor acknowledges that there are web developers and content editors and that
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their interests and preferences are very different. This is reflected heavily
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in the design of Lektor and if you make your first Lektor project you can see
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why. A web developer would go in and setup the theme and structure of a
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Lektor project and content creators can then fill in the content of the site.
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The collaboration can be based on version control systems like git or just
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basic solutions like Dropbox. It's intentionally built so that collaboration
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can work via the most basic systems like Dropbox or just network shares.
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When you go live, you can synchronize up your changes into a remote server
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just as easily.
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<img src="git.png" alt="" class="screenshot">
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