website rewrite (2022)
created 2022/05/24 modified 2022/08/15 category text
the website infrastructure has undergone two major changes recently, which was needed since the last rewrite was two years ago now and isn't satisfactory anymore
the great gemtextification
the previous static site generator (ssg) relied on a bastardized version of markdown to store wiki pages and required too much supportting html/css/js and had to go
i have replaced it with the gemtext format borrowed from the gemini project which is much simpler to parse and render, this has *significantly* reduced the size of the templates, the css, and the ssg. as a byproduct i am now also able to host a gemini mirror of the website free from any extra code
i also changed hosts to a vps provider so instead of forcibly re-uploading every file via ftp, i can run a script on the server via ssh to pull the latest version of the github repository, build it, and copy the output to the lighttpd www/ and agate gemini/ folders
rise of quickj
i think halving the size of the already small ssg isn't very productive if it relies on node.js, a very heavy javascript engine, to function. now quickjs has been on my radar for a while but i've never had an excuse to use it until now, think of it as the tcc for node
i rewrote the ssg to use quickjs's (much simpler) api and tested until i got it running locally, once it was done i installed qjs on the server, merged into master, and ran the publish script and nothing changed whatsoever*
*in the end i manually converted every .md file to .gmi by hand and spent a week on it