We just removed the CMS behind our product site completely and replaced it with a static site. We used to have a static site before, using PHP includes for shared templates like layouts and navigation. However in our latest redesign we added so much content that it helped to have a CMS behind it, for non technical people to update the site. But at the same time it became less fun to update the site for our techies that were not involved in the project before. That’s why we decided to go back to basics. Looking for something simple in Ruby, our beloved language, I stumbled across Middleman. Middleman is a static site generator based on Sinatra. It supports different template languages (Haml, Sass, Compass, Slim, CoffeeScript, and more) and makes minification, compression, cache busting, Yaml data an easy part of your development cycle.
So now we have all the flexibility in the world, it’s easy for everyone with basic HTML skills to update the site, we have version control and simple deployment using GIT and it forces us to make the site compact and maintain less content, which is finally a good thing. Plus the site is super fast.
Hello, how do I add custom HTML to my website? I’ve added a Facebook ‘Like’ widget using HTML, but all the other HTML I add seems to have been ‘erased’ by the next time I log into Viewbook, and none of it ever takes effect.
Many thanks
Comment by Ben Langhorne — February 20, 2012 @ 7:29 am
Ben, we have a support site at support.viewbook.com with help articles, you can also send your questions there. We do allow custom HTML but no Javascript, You need to change a setting when getting the Facebook like code. Read here for more info: http://support.viewbook.com/entries/20249977-how-do-i-integrate-social-icons-in-my-site
Comment by Rien — February 20, 2012 @ 9:24 am