Low-friction publishing workflow

Some interesting thoughts on SSG vs SSR, especially given there could be a pendulum swing away from build steps coming:

This site is dynamic; it’s hosted on fly.io which makes it super easy to run a server. Requests are handled by a server which query the graph and dynamically render the content. Cloudflare caches the requests.

Why not use a static site generator? The mental model of a static site generator has always felt more complex to me. I just want to handle a request and do stuff. The nice thing is the complexity can grow to my needs; when I’ve used static site generators before, they always start simple but it always turns into a headache to do anything more than simple markdown routes.

SSG also impedes the frictionless publishing workflow. I can write this content and press Cmd+Shift+e and see it immediately on my site. That’s amazing.

There’s no compile step to wait for. I just upload some new content and it’s immediately available.

SSG favors run-time simplicity over build-time complexity. That’s a tradeoff many are willing to make, but I find having to commit my content and push to github just to publish content way too much friction.