Big, Static Sites (was Re: [thelist] synchronizing remote/local)

Morbus Iff morbus at disobey.com
Mon Jan 22 18:08:31 CST 2001


 >I have two words for you: institutional inertia.

Well, I'll agree with that, and I'll also launch my own: feature creep. I 
don't *ever* see a need to pay more for development costs of database 
functionality if you have the right tools in the first place.

I use BBEdit 6.0 and Anarchie 3.7 to maintain Disobey. I test in 3 Mac 
browser, and two PC browsers. It's a matter of love. And I'm updated more 
then other large sites that are either database or static. And I've got a 
fulltime job and freelance on the side.

It's not an issue of not knowing how to do it - I code in Perl with XML 
backends, Perl with DBI calls to MySQL, and Coldfusion with SQL calls to MS 
Access. I got paid to learn that stuff, mostly by clueless clients who were 
convinced that if they didn't pay craploads of money for their horrible 100 
page site, then they weren't doing the Internet "right".

Case in point: a new Slashdot like culture site, which roughly rhymes with 
"basket" developed an RSS script which merely sucked down their headlines 
and showed them as <li>'s. It was about 100-150 lines long. The same thing 
was done with more functionality and more flexibility in ten lines using 
XML::RSS. Overcomplication at it's finest.

Overcomplication, feature creep, and "OoOOh! Look! MySQL! RSS! XML! Huge 
load times! Misconfigured mod_perl! Syntax errors!, etc., etc., etc.) drive 
me up a flippin' wall.

I'd much rather have a static site that is throttled by Apache, then a 
webserver which is blissfully underloaded but whose articles can't be read 
because a connection limit has occurred on the db.


Morbus Iff
.sig on other machine.
http://www.disobey.com/
http://www.gamegrene.com/





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