The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. https://tinkerbetter.tube/videos/watch/79457371-7251-4386-940f-03535f111acb My band has a website. I made it using 1990s technology. And 2K20s technology. And I think it's pretty nice. In today's episode, I'll cover the Eleventy static site generator, and how I adapted a design made on vintage hardware (using AOLPress on Windows 95!) to a modern workflow. Important links mentioned in the video: ๐Ÿ–ฅ๏ธ Homestar Runner's "Back to a Website" toon (which may have inspired this video): https://homestarrunner.com/toons/backtoawebsite ๐ŸŽˆ Eleventy (or 11ty as the cool kids call it): https://www.11ty.dev/ ๐ŸŽ‰ Sophia Brandt wrote up a helpful article about deploying to GitHub Pages with Eleventy: https://www.rockyourcode.com/how-to-deploy-eleventy-to-github-pages-with-github-actions/ And if you want to help me make more unsponsored videos like this one: ๐Ÿ…ฟ๏ธ https://patreon.com/VeronicaExplains โ˜• https://ko-fi.com/VeronicaExplains Chapters: 0:00 I say "greetings" and explain why I like static sites 2:41 What is a static site generator anyway? 4:13 About my website (thestopbits.net) 6:01 Modding the Eleventy template 9:14 Adding posts to Eleventy 10:04 I talk too long about the modern web Thu, 02 Jul 2026 17:39:24 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://fedi.video The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. https://fedi.video/lazy-static/avatars/02f93071-79de-43d5-8a8f-e4ed5a39345c.png https://tinkerbetter.tube/videos/watch/79457371-7251-4386-940f-03535f111acb All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://fedi.video/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder. <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - Troler]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=22347 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=22347 Fri, 10 Oct 2025 18:41:30 GMT So why do you hate JQuery?

]]> Troler <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - MarcDW]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=21044 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=21044 Mon, 04 Aug 2025 04:27:06 GMT I first put up a web page back in '98 (which I found out was archived) but earlier this year I decided to return to the web.

Went around wondering how to do that. Didn't want to use those bloaty site generators. Read around the IndieWeb stuff and whatnot and decided to do it by hand. Though I did make use of Seamonkey's Composer.

Kept reading about static site generator's but not sure what to use.

Might redo things with 11ty and move my page from GitHub to Codeberg maybe.
Nice video, thanks.

]]> MarcDW <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - Kees N โœ…]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20847 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20847 Fri, 25 Jul 2025 21:25:17 GMT @spacemagick @vkc I still use gawk for. - static site generators - CGI dynamic pages (only on LAN)

I used to switch to a web server written in gawk ( "Lakota" ) that emitted "Site is down for maintenance" when my Apache was down.

]]> Kees N โœ… <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - ฦงฦฟัฆฯ‚ษ›โ™ัฆเจนัคสž]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20847 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20847 Fri, 25 Jul 2025 19:42:45 GMT @vkc Did anybody else used to write websites using awk or was it just me? ๐Ÿ™‚ #WebEditing #WebDev #WWW #AWK #RetroComputing

]]> ฦงฦฟัฆฯ‚ษ›โ™ัฆเจนัคสž <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - postroutine]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20659 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20659 Mon, 14 Jul 2025 10:34:59 GMT Very nice video. And yes, 256 color is enough. ๐Ÿ˜„

]]> postroutine <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - Sylvhem]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20622 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20622 Sat, 12 Jul 2025 03:20:20 GMT @vkc I smiled when I saw the part of the video where you used AOLpress. Some friends and I just made a website with Claris Home Page a few weeks ago.

]]> Sylvhem <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - Nathan Upchurch]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20364 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20364 Tue, 24 Jun 2025 23:12:09 GMT Huge fan of Eleventy.

]]> Nathan Upchurch <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - Kevin Freitas]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20178 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20178 Wed, 18 Jun 2025 18:36:32 GMT @vkc Love this so much! My bandโ€™s site is just HTML and CSS: https://betterasbrass.band

]]> Kevin Freitas <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - Hippo ๐Ÿ‰]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20170 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20170 Wed, 18 Jun 2025 14:00:50 GMT @vkc I was also speaking to my aunt and uncle (who are web designers) about the fact that a lot of clients don't end up updating their website themselves, instead calling a developer or someone to do it anyway. So even for them, in some cases, perhaps there's no need of a CMS like Wordpress of Grav if they'll anyway call me and I can do it via Markdown!

Something to think about ๐Ÿ‘€

]]> Hippo ๐Ÿ‰ <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - Hippo ๐Ÿ‰]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20170 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20170 Wed, 18 Jun 2025 13:59:24 GMT @vkc this is cool! Even I've been through a bunch of website hosting mechanisms and settled upon static site generators as the best (although I use Haunt, no 11ty) ๐Ÿ‘ป

They're *almost* as lean as hand-coded HTML, but with just the right amount of dynamic-ness so I don't feel I'm repeating the same code endlessly โœจ

]]> Hippo ๐Ÿ‰ <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - Evan Freyer]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20167 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20167 Wed, 18 Jun 2025 10:59:23 GMT @vkc Great video! I am thinking about static site generators back and forth all the time, but I donห‹t know how I would do microblogging (or any other content) when I am not at my laptop and only on my tablet or smartphone. Does anyone have an idea?

Another thing I need to wrap my head around are gig dates. I donโ€˜t yet know how to properly manage and archive these when they happened. ๐Ÿค”

]]> Evan Freyer <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - Noelle]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20163 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20163 Wed, 18 Jun 2025 05:02:18 GMT @vkc That was a lovely watch! 11ty is great!

]]> Noelle <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - Ted]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20160 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20160 Wed, 18 Jun 2025 03:53:22 GMT "so much of the modern web is solving problems by introducing new problems" - very accurate assessment by @vkc

]]> Ted <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - DoomBananas]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20158 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20158 Tue, 17 Jun 2025 20:05:14 GMT ahh static sites โค๏ธ this is the way.

CMS'es still have a place for the non tech savvy, but for the people able to make a fediverse account tools like 11ty, hugo, etc makes wp look like a solution looking for a problem ๐Ÿ˜

]]> DoomBananas <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - Alex]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20157 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20157 Tue, 17 Jun 2025 19:31:03 GMT @vkc I setup a very simple bash script but after watching this video I feel like switching to Eleventy.

The thought of updating & tweaking my script in the future makes me shudder.

Thanks for all the great and very helpful videos!

]]> Alex <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - nwoof]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20156 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20156 Tue, 17 Jun 2025 18:58:17 GMT You brought me some nostalgia.

]]> nwoof <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - Bryan]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20154 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=20154 Tue, 17 Jun 2025 17:23:11 GMT @vkc Great video! I looked at your page and it looks awesome! I recently got inspired to make a personal site (still in progress, not shared it yet) and all of that HTML knowledge I had from the late 90's starting rushing back. My goal is to write it all myself, maybe annoying my wife to do some graphic design. I did learn to do a little java script and css in the past few days, but I am keeping it all super simple.

]]> Bryan <![CDATA[The modern web sucks. My band's website doesn't. - mesa]]> https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=28315 https://fedi.video/w/fYydYFPnuknT7pwXp7kA7P;threadId=28315 Tue, 17 Jun 2025 16:16:53 GMT Ive been having a good time with https://neocities.org/ and seeing what other people have been making.

]]> mesa