To follow up on the Static Site Generator concept, perhaps Front Matter with Hugo or Astro?
On Thu, Oct 9, 2025 at 8:36 AM Ben Koenig <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thursday, October 9th, 2025 at 8:22 AM, Dick Steffens < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > On 10/9/25 07:33, Paul Heinlein wrote: > > > > > 1. Assume that the church staff or another volunteer will at some > > > point take over site management, > > > > > > I've definitely thought of that. > > > > > so document EVERYTHING and then > > > train at least one other person on site basics. Document all > > > questions raised during the training and their answers. Did I > > > mention documentation? > > > > > > +1 on documentation. Not sure who else will be able to pick up on it. At > > least one member has a son who works in IT, so he might be a good choice. > > > > > 2. Make sure the documentation includes any and every customization > > > you configured into your site, whether it's installing a plugin, > > > changing variables in some PHP code, adding images or photos, etc. > > > > > > Definitely understood. > > > > > 3. WordPress and its plugins have a long, long history of security > > > vulnerabilities and exploits. Devise and document a plan for > > > keeping track of WP security issues and the exact steps necessary > > > for remediation. > > > > > > Where do I keep up to date on those things? Is there a WP forum or some > > such? > > > > > 4. Once more: document and train. Document and train. The number of > > > congregational IT projects setup by well-meaning volunteers that go > > > orphaned and unmaintained when the volunteer becomes unavailable > > > exceeds the number of dead Assyrian soldiers left outside Jerusalem > > > during Hezekiah's reign. If you care for your congregation enough > > > to get this site up and running, then also take care that it can be > > > well and lovingly maintained when you are (for whatever reason) > > > unavailable. > > > > > > Understood. Back before 2016 I produced a site with mostly hand coded > > PHP and HTML. Then someone decided to have an outside party do the job. > > She just decided she's no longer doing websites, which is why I'm > > looking into learning WP. Plus, we need to figure out what the look and > > feel needs to be, and produce a bunch of new photos. Big tasks. Sigh. > > > > Thanks for all your recommendations. I made some progress yesterday, and > > have a little bit better understanding of how to proceed. > > > > -- > > Regards, > > > > Dick Steffens > > If this site is small enough and updates are infrequent (weekly updates > count as infrequent in terms of web services) then you could probably look > at the problem from a different angle. > > A Static Site Generator might be enough for this organization. This would > solve a lot of the problems with security since your web host only has to > serve plain HTML/CSS and maybe simple javascript. The flow of updating the > website would also be easier for less technical people to wrap their head > around. You still need to document it as others have mentioned, but the > flow would basically look like this: > > 1) make the edit > 2) re-generate site/page > 3) upload to server > > This can all be automated. And since the generator is not an online > program you don't need to be paranoid about security. > > This also eliminates the need for a database. Full blown CMS systems like > wordpress are generally best if you want to have multiple people updating a > blog at the same time. But if just one person is responsible for updating > the website (As is often the case for small orgs) then you can greatly > simplify the rollout with tool that doesn't need a full LAMP stack. > > Just a thought. Not sure how big or active this church group is. > -Ben > >
