When we set up Steading System Software (over 10 years ago) we asked Sites by Fee to build us a simple web site. This was done and it served us well.

It was a creation of its time, running on some scripted backend, requiring a database and all sorts of stuff like that. All that technology was, needless to say, far more than we needed. But in those days your options were content manahement systems or raw html. Given that we wanted something with a certain amount of style we went for CMS.

Of course over time of course maintaing a database and a scripting language and a gargantual script written in that language because impossible. Dreamhost (who hosted us) started to offer scripting languages built in. but of course the CMS hadn’t been ported and things deteriorated.

About 2 years ago my long time colleague Ian Young who is always my go to guy for having an eye on the correct technology pointed me at YAML and JEKYLL. He then provided us with excellent support in moving our cruft old CMS site back to proper static content.

Which is where we are now. Static content Rocks! I no longer need worry about maintaing whole rafts of code I didn’t need, and I don’t have to worry about security. Somone else manages the Apache that this static data is served from.

Thanks Ian.