PUBLII

Nick Baird guides you through the creation and deployment of a static website without touching a single line of code.

Credit: https://getpublii.com

OUR EXPERT

Nick Baird has been using Linux since kernel 2.2. He recently abandoned Kubuntu for Manjaro as his main desktop because life is too short for Firefox snap cold-start times.

W ordPress-style database-driven CMSes are huge overkill for a lot of websites, particularly if you are serving up the same content to all of your visitors, and only updating the site every day or two. But suppose there was an alternative that provided an easy way to create theme-able, attractive websites for uploading to a web server? Well, there is, using a static site generator. We covered these before in LXF282, but the options reviewed required the use of the command line and/or markdown language to create the website. Today we are taking a look at another option that operates entirely from a GUI and has a full WYSIWYG mode, allowing a website to be created with the same ease as with WordPress – Publii.

Publii is free to download, fully open source under the GPL v3.0 licence and bills itself as a “static site CMS”, providing most of the benefits of a dynamic CMS but without the server overhead and security risks. Downloads are available for Linux, Mac OS and Win64, and it runs locally on your PC to create the site before uploading to your web server. Publii generates responsive web pages that work on large desktop monitors down to small phone screens, supports accelerated mobile pages (AMP) for fast mobile browsing and provides tools for search engine optimisation (SEO). Because it generates static pages, your website will have decent performance on a lowend package from one of the many available hosting companies, or even self-hosted on a Raspberry Pi under your desk at home.

The Publii welcome page. Enter names for the website and the author, then click Create Website to get started.

So, let’s dive in and create our first Publii website. Head to https://getpublii.comand click Download, where Linux users will find DEB, RPM and AppImage options. Publii is also available in the Arch User Repository (AUR) for users of Arch Linux and derivatives such as Manjaro. In Ubuntu, clicking on the downloaded publii.deb file will offer to install it via the GUI, but the standard command line install option applies:

Once installed, click on the Publii icon to start the app and you will see a welcome page inviting you to enter a name and author for the site, select an icon to associate with it (the icon doesn’t appear on the published website – it’s just to help manage multiple sites in the app), and click Create Website.