simple web creator

[guy]

I am looking for a way to create, publish and organise simple web pages, much like a basic blog or a wiki but all done on my PC and then uploaded to a static web site. Doesn't need to be searchable, etc.

In the past I have hand-cut my html in a text editor but I'd like something more automated. For example I don't mind building a list of links one by one, but it needs to be a quick copy/paste or drag-and-drop rather than typing in the code. Text formatting - headings, paragraphs, etc - needs to be GUI based.

Needs to be free as in beer and as in Libre, preferably in the debian repos.

Does anybody know of anything suitable?

[arochester]

BlueGriffon?

[guy]

BlueGriffon?

H'mm. Word count, full-screen mode, LaTeX entry, colour eyedropper, table styles are all cost extras. That's not very free. Still, I can use other tools for those things.

[guy]

I ought to add, I tried out a few already:

- Firebug: have to wait until I update my ancient debian distro, which means waiting until GNOME care to play nicely again.

- SeaMonkey (aka IceApe) composer. Outdated, e.g. doesn't accept CSS for table borders. Does accept iframes, so I can at least open and clone a template page without trashing it.

- Abiword & OpenOffice Writer: drop iframe links and other stuff they don't understand.

Of these, SeaMonkey/IceApe seems the one to beat.

[roseway]

I don't think any of the available options are currently being supported. BlueGriffon is supposedly active, but the author hasn't shown his face since last October, when he reported that he had got a new job and would be concentrating on that.

Personally I use Kompozer, which is comfortable and easy to use, but doesn't always produce good code. So I find myself increasingly hand-editing the source.

[towy71]

I have used both Quanta and bluefish in the past and liked both YMMV

[johnlane]

I recommend that you take a look at Jekyll (http://jekyllrb.com). With this you write posts in Markdown syntax, each in its own text file, and then run it through a parser which generates a HTML site that you can upload to any static webspace.

If you want free hosting, look at github pages (https://pages.github.com). If you use this you can just upload the Jekyll markdown and it takes care of the parsing for you.

If you want something a bit slicker, with a GUI and all, and if you can run your own server, take a look at Ghost (https://ghost.org). If you don't want to run your own server, they offer hosting from $5 a month.

HTH

[johnlane]

I have used both Quanta and bluefish in the past and liked both YMMV

broken link Quanta; try this one

[guy]

Thanks all. Jekyll looks really great and is closest in concept to what I didn't know to ask for. But it still needs my deathless prose to be correctly formatted in one markup language or another: I can't just bang thoughts into a GUI and have it all formatted for me. And perhaps worse, there is no "these are the things you can configure" GUI when setting it up, just knowing what to type into the config file or bash in the bad old Linux way.

If anybody comes up with a user-friendly graphical front end for Jekyll, I trust it will be called Hyde.

SeaMonkey/IceApe Composer seems to be working for me so far in a clunky sort of way, having accepted my HTML5 page template without corrupting it. Though I still have to hand-code anything the least bit modern, such as in-page CSS.

[guy]

Jekyll install uses gems needs Ruby 1.9. My obsolete debian has 1.8. More waiting for a new version that actually installs with a functional desktop, sigh.

Back to SeaMonkey Composer.

[rickdownton]

Unfortunately this is also one of my biggest problems in using/recommending Linux to Windows users - eventually I gave up trying to use Linux for web rapid development and now mainly use Win 8.1 with Serif Webplus - yes it costs, but at least I can get the job done now that I've found out how to dual-boot with 8.1!

[guy]

My new "blocki", or blog-cum-wiki, is now live at http://www.steelpillow.com/blocki/index.html

Any comments welcome.

@rickdownton having watched grow at unbelievable speed the stunning results of a real pro developing with ColdFusion on Windows, I have to agree. What chance have poor hobbyists like me got, huh.

[leke]

It's not GUI based, but I remember looking at this a while back. It's a very basic cms that recognises markdown. All you have to do is upload your content as a text file to the appropriate directory.

[guy]

It's not GUI based, but I remember looking at this a while back. It's a very basic cms that recognises markdown. All you have to do is upload your content as a text file to the appropriate directory.

Server-side

[fraxinus]

I have always used Quanta Plus for this purpose, even though it has been left by the wayside by KDE development and never ported to KDE 4. It is very very good, although it is now showing its age and I don't know how it will handle HTML5.

Warning - you will need to install a pile of KDE3 dependencies. I use Linux Mint and I enabled the Trinity Desktop Environment repos (http://www.trinitydesktop.org/) - this dragged them all in. I guess it would be possible to do this in Debian too.