A New version of the site for 2021

A big change is planned for this site in 2021: I am going to abandon the Foswiki engine for it, to pursue my recent goal of going back to the web roots. Basically, it a quest that relies more on:

  • Fast rendering by no rendering at all: pre-compiling the site pages into static HTML+CSS+JS pages: the JAMstack approach.
  • What I call a LAUW approach (Linux Apache Unix-utilities Web Standards) instead of the traditional LAMP. Using the full strengths of Linux, Apache, the GNU Unix utilities, and the modern web standards (HTML5, CSS4, JS ES6) now that Internet Explorer is at last dead. This means not using software libraries (e.g: JQuery) and processors (e.g: Saas) that were designed to remedy to the poor state of some browsers.
  • Using Markdown for text editing
  • Using ultra stable and reliable technologies. I want to use things that will still work in 10 years, not the fad-of-the-day javascript framework that will be obsolete in 6 months, or that will break compatibility on each update.
  • Technical: And that do not try to be friendly to non-technical authors and admins, as I will be the sole admin and editor.

Now

So now (December 2020), I am still using Foswiki, but progressively prototyping on it the features I will try to implement later:

  • A simplified skin, with all the "wiki-ism" (everything editable) removed. As you can see I got rid of the left toolbar, to keep only the top banner with its sections (Code/Surf/Blog) menu on the logo and minimal tools on the right
  • Editing contents in Markdown instead of the Foswiki syntax: I now do not use the Foswiki system to edit topics, but desktop-edit via marktext.
  • Having all the post sharing a common Form, so that the fields of this form can be easily converted to YAML as used as frontmatter (metadata) in modern Markdown-based systems.
  • But still using all the Foswiki power for the site admin and non-content topics (indexes,...)

The idea is to migrate progressively the contents into a form (Markdown + Frontmatter) usable in a modern static web generator like Hugo, while adapting Foswiki to use this content form, preparing a future migration.

I have developed the details of what this means in my post on the Foswiki site: Foswiki for non-wiki web sites

Spring 2021

After I retire, at the end of February 2021, I will have more time to ditch Foswiki and implement the site on a new engine. It will probably be a static website generator, most probably Hugo, but maybe also Zola Eleventy, or Gasby, and incorporating ideas of the myriad of other ones.

Summer 2021

I will then probably replace progressively various components of this system by ones that I will handcraft optimally to incorporate all the ideas I have been toying with during all these years: the HTML+CSS+JS layout, the tag/category system, the search engine, the comment engine, the editing process...

Later...

And I may even at some time create a totally new web engine system, who knows?

Or code a wiki replacement: a collaborative editing site based on the concepts learned via this experiment.