WIP blog post: Python Website Recipes

_drafts/2017-09-20-python-website-recipes.md

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+---
+title:
+...
+
+I've already made a personal site with [GitHub Pages],
+but I'm still curious about all the other options.
+I'm really tempted to see how quickly I could replicate the original site
+with alternative solutions.
+Of course, if I'm really sincere in my desire to learn,
+I'd be well served to write about my experience.
+
+At the moment,
+I'm most interested in static site generators,
+but I'd also like to try more conventional, "always on" solutions.
+
+## Making Websites
+
+So, the question is,
+how does one best deliver one's thoughts to another human
+through a web browser?
+
+If the answer is "make a website",
+it's time to break it down into smaller pieces,
+because there are probably as many ways to make a website
+as are ways to open a restaurant.
+
+A hypothetical restauranteur faces numerous choices:
+
+- the choice of menu items,
+- the decor,
+- the kitchen equipment,
+- the behaviour of the wait staff,
+- the building location,
+- the customer parking,
+- locks and alarms,
+- and so on.
+
+Similarly, a recipe for a website comprises:
+
+- the selection of content,
+- the visual design,
+- the user experience design,
+- the document handling tools,
+- the server's programming languages (if any),
+- the HTTP server,
+- caching technologies,
+- the domain name and URL schemes,
+- security necessities such as SSL,
+- and so on.
+
+The number of combinations of possibilities is understandably daunting.
+
+## Overview of Website Architecture
+
+The best way to grasp an overview of possible solutions
+would be to trace the path of information
+flowing between author and reader,
+and enumerate the variables potentially affecting that path.
+Let's trace upstream from reader to author,
+because there's little variability in the final legs of a web page's trip,
+and much variability in the middle and earlier.
+
+The first web browser had originally been a simple viewing and navigating layer
+between human client and machine server.
+Early web servers did little more than to obediently
+deliver a file from disk over the network, upon request.
+With this simple system, there were few choices:
+
+- Which document editor will you use to write the raw content of your pages?
+- Will the document contain embedded functionality
+  for the browser to bring to life?
+- If extra, dynamic functionality is being created, what tools will do it?
+- To which web browser applications and versions will you cater?
+- How is the web formatted file produced
+  before it's given to the web server machine?
+- How will you copy the file to the web server machine?
+- What web server software and operating system are on the server machine?
+- What web addresses will the site's pages use?
+
+Beginning with this simple foundation, we get all possible combinations of
+what would these days be called "static websites".
+
+### Static Websites
+
+For static websites, all content is fully formed in advance,
+and the software or person responsible
+doesn't stick around to participate in
+minute-by-minute delivery to users.
+Instead, the pre-created website files go to a web server
+that's single-mindedly dedicated to the task of endlessly
+listening for requests and fulfilling them one after another
+with a transmission of the corresponding file.
+By the time any real world user visits a page on a static site,
+the original software that generated it is done with this process,
+and therefore cannot interact with visitors at all.
+
+When I got started with making websites,
+this was the workflow for everyone involved:
+
+1. I write content for later inclusion or conversion into HTML
+2. I make web-ready files: HTML (by copy-and-paste, mostly),
+   and optionally CSS and JavaScript (if I felt ambitious)
+3. Deliver files to server or storage system used by server (probably by FTP)
+4. User requests page from browser, browser requests page from server
+5. Server delivers file to user's browser, browser displays or downloads file
+6. Repeat from step 4
+
+#### Dynamic Features on "Static" Pages
+
+That's not to say dynamism is impossible,
+just that there's no participation from
+the actual machine that sent the pages.
+Dynamic interaction can be achieved in the browser with JavaScript,
+and pages can even appear to change and those changes persist
+between visits by using local storage such as cookies.
+Furthermore, certain HTTP methods that are
+typically associated with classic HTML forms
+can send data to other machines,
+which can in turn do the remembering or computation
+your web server or user's browser doesn't do.
+For example, [Disqus] can store comments
+for any article published on a static site.
+
+
+#### Static Site Generators
+
+There's a class of web publishing tools that specialize in getting
+authors through the first step of making web-ready files
+after the necessarily human part is done.
+This saves an author the trouble of working through technical matters,
+so the author's focus can be on producing content.
+Getting the files to a web server is sometimes feature of these systems, too.
+In some cases, the tool in question is already on the Internet,
+just waiting for your non-HTML content so it can neatly produce
+ugly-but-necessary files that look great in the browser.
+
+- [GitHub Pages]
+
+### Server Based Solutions
+
+If you need your website users to be able to interact with your site while using the browser,
+some sort of machine needs to be ready and waiting to handle those needs.
+
+- [Flask]
+- [Pyramid]
+- [Django]
+
+## Choosing
+
+When approaching the problem of
+choosing amongst numerous solutions
+it's best to start by paring away as many options as possible.
+
+I can narrow down the solutions I'm most interested in
+if I take a narrow-minded point of view
+by eschewing languages other than those that are necessary.
+HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are nearly unavoidable on the web,
+unless one strives for utmost simplicity.
+
+## Python
+
+I'm in love with Python
+as a language for expressing information for humans.
+If I open my mind to include the fondly cherished Python,
+I increase my list of fun trials
+by a reasonably vast extent,
+without going hopelessly overboard.
+
+[Flask]: http://flask.pocoo.org/
+[GitHub Pages]: https://pages.github.com/
+[Disqus]: https://disqus.com/