I haven't found the right tool to build a smolweb site, yet
2025-04-08 07:10
There are plenty of tools out there to build static websites such as Hugo, Zola, Pelican, Publii… they're powerful and well-made. But they all assume you're building your site locally. You install them on your computer, write and edit your content there, and then push the result to a server. That's fine if you always write from the same machine. But I don't. I write from different devices, depending on where I am and what I have on hand, so relying on a local setup doesn't fit my workflow.
On the other side, you have all classic CMS tools running directly on a server. But most of them are bloated, over-engineered, or just too heavy for what I consider a proper smolweb site.
I've tried to make my own workarounds. I wrote small scripts like ergol-http, which converts Gemini capsules to HTML on the fly, and smolmd (used on pages.casa), which just publishes a directory full of Markdown files. These helped me get closer to what I want, but they still rely on direct server access (FTP, SSH…), and that's not always ideal or accessible.
What I'm looking for is a lightweight tool, something minimal yet functional. A simple PHP app (because PHP is still one of the easiest languages to deploy on a shared server) that offers a Markdown editor/textarea in the browser. It should permit to upload images, store files in a structured directory tree that reflects the site's hierarchy, and take care of rendering clean, simple, and semantic HTML pages, and its rss feed. That's all. No JavaScript frameworks, no databases, no unnecessary features, just something small and sustainable that follows the smolweb.org approach: simplicity, readability, and low resource usage.
I haven't found it yet. But maybe I'll end up building it.