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The main issue with Jekyll is the blog post system. It requires all the blog posts to live under `_posts/<date>-<slug>.md`. So now the user has to invoke a command-line tool to create the proper slug. Then if the post doesn't get published on the same day or the title changes the user has to rename the filename. Images live in a different folder and get all put together.

A better implementation would be: render all the markdown files in the repository and map README.md to index.html. Now you can create your own file structure, have your images with the article, and optionally add them to the RSS feed by adding a `published_at` in the frontmatter. Or even better use the git history to find out when it was added (and changed) in the repo. You get all the "admin" and rendering for free from GitHub.

I guess my point is that there is a lot of friction inherent to Jekyll's blog post publishing system. Since I adopted that other approach it's much easier for me. I love to only focus on the text and not worry about the rendering. And be able to edit it with my favourite text editor.

As a proud HN commentor you should have built your own static site generator long time ago. Preferably in Assembler or some esoteric unknown language!

As much as I love Jekyll, I have to agree with your points. Jekyll isn't very accessible with it's specific front matter and file naming convention. However I don't think Jekyll will ever have a proper GUI.

You can have the best of both worlds though. You can use gulp.js to build Jekyll friendly files coming from Ghost using the Ghost Content API: https://david.darn.es/tutorial/2019/08/11/use-ghost-with-jek...

I tried Hugo before but came to the same conclusion. The simplicity draw me into trying it, but in my opinion the solution is not streamlined.

That's why i finally settled for a Flat File CMS [1], in my case Grav [2]. Like with hugo you get total control. And with most of them you get a single web interface to administrate the site, manage extensions and write blog entries. And you still have the possibility to git push everything on the dev server and git pull on prod, without managing a database. It's a dream.

They are not without problems though. You need to host your php site somewhere. Sometimes it's necessary to dive into php to fix some problems and creating something unique still takes some web skills (in contrary to wordpress for example).

[1] https://github.com/ahadb/flat-file-cms

[2] https://getgrav.org/

I would love something with a UI like Grav to edit and create my site, but with a static web page export to publish it. I'm fine with running the UI only locally on my computer so even a desktop app would be fine.

There's a plugin [1] for that, but I haven't used it before. It creates plain old html files.

[1] https://github.com/BarryMode/grav-plugin-blackhole

I used Jekyll for a long time before I got tired of it for the exact reason you mentioned. I used write.as for a while until I found rwtxt (https://github.com/schollz/rwtxt). You could self host if needed.

It's extremely minimal, but I found that it's perfect for my needs. Sample blog: [link redacted]

> Of course I'd like a static website for deploying, but I'd love a web gui which acts as a frontend for such generators.

We used to have that with MovableType and (less known) Bricolage.

Today there is Lektor (does it support Python 3?) and that's about it.

Yeah my dream blog is basically Ghost that deploys static posts when I hit Publish/Update. I’ve been slowly working on something like that for myself.

Have you looked into doing just that? There are a number of options and more arriving all the time.

https://ghost.org/docs/api/v2/gatsby/

https://ghost.org/docs/api/v2/eleventy/

https://ghost.org/integrations/netlify/

It feels a bit overkill to pay $29 per month just for a hosted blog UI. And if you're running Ghost yourself on a server or on your computer, it's not really a static site anymore.

From the OP:

> Of course I'd like a static website for deploying, but I'd love a web gui which acts as a frontend for such generators.

If you want such a gui on your local machine you're not much more than a few commands away

  npm i -g ghost-cli
  ghost install local

This looks promising. I'll check it out.

A good compromise is something like Netlify CMS[0], which adds a GUI on top of a static site generator so you can write posts through a web interface. AFAIK it works with a variety of static generators, so you have a few choices. Of course, you're tied to the netlify infrastructure.

[0]: https://www.netlifycms.org

I used it. Nice but incomplete, and still needs manual tinkering.

I'm using Pelican [0] and found it really easy to setup and use.

I use Jekyll + one admin plugin. Work locally, then do jk build and ./deploy.sh and everything goes smoothly. But well, it's not pretty interface to deploy.

I always liked Joel Spolsky's CityDesk software. It's way out of date now but the basic principles were good. I'd love to find a modern equivalent.

What about a local Wordpress instance + a script to scrap content and publish it as a static website? Best of the two worlds without too much fiddling.

Are you sure it's easy to 'scrap' ? What if the plugins render something conditionally depending on e.g. the user agent or the current time or other variables? Faking a static website through a mirror doesn't work nicely.