In the beginning of 2024 we started our internal project to re-establish our webpages. The step was a win-win solution for the whole pilar team. Our apprentice had to learn some basic system administration and get into HTML5 / CSS coding. And our old webpage was somehow difficult to maintain, with a database and other oving parts.
To reduce the complexity of the deployment we simply picked a static site generation web framework, and started to hook in the necessary CSS/HTML buidling blocks. The selection of a franework was swiftly done, and the integration of a CSS franework as well. We faced some difficulties with the definition of our building "blocks", but after all we decided with a reduced set and then add fancier features later. Overall, we expect to have less operational hazzles, because our final deployment is just a set of plain html pages. With no javascript and no database to hack this means less security exposure to the outside world: just a core HTTP server which is easy to apply hardening.
Although a static site generator may seem easy to maintain at first hand, you still need an operational context in case you have several persons editing your content. Just picking a framework is the first step, but you need to operationalize and do deployments as for any other framework. Still, a static site generator is a lot easier to deploy. Especially for SME a worthwhile investment. And we are not lacking any essential services.
We hope you like our new web presence and we are looking forward to publish some new articles soon, so make sure to check back ...
Cheers, Marvin