[HacktionLab] Workshop proposal for BarnCamp: How static HTML saved my marriage

[Mike Harris]

Hi there,

I have a workshop idea for BarnCamp.  Thought I'd run it past the list
to see if anyone thinks it's a good idea, or really too techy.  Am a tad
concerned at the moment that there's too many computer-related
workshops.  Anyway here goes....

I'd semi-jokingly put down a rant about how Drupal's ruined my life (as
a web developer).  That might be amusing (for some), but it's not that
constructive.

I do think there's something in it though in that I can see how there's
an enthusiasm for using CMS systems, such as Drupal, Wordpress and
Joomla!, but a lot of people have very simple web sites and CMSes can
often be rather overkill.  If one does any development, or even
themeing/skinning, then learning their idosyncratic APIs can present a
learning considerable learning curve.  In addition CMSes can produce
very unoptimised websites that perform literally hundreds of database
queries to render a page and use a nasty web of nested HTML.  With
Drupal, often the case is that people place the sites behind a caching
proxy, such as Varnish, in order to speed them up.

I'd like to do a workshop presenting the case that for simple web sites
of say 6-10 pages, including a blog page, that learning some HTML, CSS,
JQuery and PHP, oh and a decent editor that indents and highlights
syntax, really is a good option, and it helps you understand how the web
works.

With this in mind, I'd then like us to produce a simple web site using
some of these technologies (obviously I'd need to provide some skeleton
templates for this).  We can each put up our own site on the local
server and show it off at the end.

As a final comparison, we can look at the load on the server and the
speed of the site when driven by a heavyweight CMS, and as static HTML.

Sensibly speaking this workshop may need to be up to 2.5 hours in length
in order to produce anything.

Anyone have any thoughts?  Perhaps this is more of a HacktionLab workshop?

Cheers,

Mike.

-- 
Mike Harris
w: http://mbharris.co.uk
t: +44 7811 671 893
0: http://mbharris.co.uk/keys/pgp.html