Not a day goes by when I work on my website that I don't wish for a simpler setup. No SSG. No npm. No tooling. Just simple HTML with partials imports, vanilla CSS, and whatever vanilla JS is necessary for enhancements.

I just want the HTML partials imports. Why don't we have them already?!

Actually, the main reason I feel uninspired to work on it (I haven't done so since I migrated to 11ty three years ago) is *because* of the tooling I need to use.

I don't want dependencies. I don't want tools with breaking updates. I just want a simple website. 🥹

@SaraSoueidan I was the same. Still early days for me but I’ve started a journey of learning and moving to Publii (double “I”).

Hope it’s inspirational and or helpful 👍

@SaraSoueidan PS not tools, just a clean Mac app.

@SaraSoueidan At the #webComponentsCG we see #HTMLModules and #declarativeWebComponents as the sort of APIs that would open the door to "HTML Macros" in this way. @justinfagnani have we captured that as a specific proposal, or is it still a part of the larger conversation?

@SaraSoueidan I never migrated away from Hugo, and while it has its own problems, I'm grateful that it's a binary that doesn't require messing with NPM or any of that stuff.

@SaraSoueidan Not perfect, but isn't https://hotwired.dev/ or https://htmx.org/ quite close to that? Or did I misunderstand the question? It is still a JS library, but you can get a long way without the need for fancy JS tooling.

@SaraSoueidan I started tweaking my website again last year after getting rid of all tooling except scss processor.

Granted, I don't have a fancy system nor difficult requirements.

But I feel like you, "modern" web development can be very complex.

@SaraSoueidan Err .. good old SSI does wat HTML partials imports do, right? Or am I misunderstanding something profound here?

@SaraSoueidan yep, agreed. The closest I've found for this is Hugo: the only dependency is the Hugo binary.

@ppk I literally had to google "SSI". Never used them and no idea how to. 🙈

@achim i haven't looked into either of these to be honest.

@SaraSoueidan preach! I was playing around with something as vanilla as possible (a node script that puts stuff together, build pages from markdown but without packages) but I still end up with web components. Not sure how I feel about that yet

@SaraSoueidan Is your server Apache? Can you upload .htaccess files via FTP or edit them via SSH? If Yes it's likely you can use SSI, and once you set it up it'll work forever, as it has done for the past 25 years and you can just use it.

@SaraSoueidan I feel similarly! Considering that whatever server I upload to already has default server languages, which is likely PHP (or possible JS via Node), it's very possible to just lightly lean on PHP imports. I am just a couple of decisions away from throwing away external tooling for native @ imports for CSS and JS since they are fully featured today. In fact, I think 2025 will be a banner year for going back to native CSS and JS!

@SaraSoueidan I agree. A build step would be OK (we usually have a deploy step anyways), it's the fact that a build step involves reams of projects that invariably change or break something on you. If the build tools could be as reliable as running rsync (for example), I'd be OK with it. But as things are, their instability goes completely against the web's stable nature that we enjoy so much.

@ppk 🤔 I'll have to look into this. Right now my setup is: 11ty website hosted on Netlify. "Simple". 😅

@SaraSoueidan I'm a "backend data juggler" who sometimes does frontend stuff just for "fun" in his spare time, so I'm probably not a qualified source.

But I can say that both libraries (I would give HTMX a try first) can be included in your page and "just work" without the need to touch the annoying JS ecosystem. They reduced my pain in personal projects A LOT.

@SaraSoueidan If you do actually rethink for using PHP imports, review Laravel Blade as a light PHP enhancement, even though it requires compiling. The syntax of Blade with combination of HTML is quite ideal to concepts I'd want for HTML imports. To be clear, take an HTML document as is, and sprinkle in some Blade conditionals. It's really nice.

@SaraSoueidan Going back to your original toot, I'm starting to wonder if you even need 11ty and Netlify. Sounds like what you want is old-fashioned Apache web hosting, where a bunch of files are just waiting for an HTTP request to arrive and are sent off to whatever browser needs them.

Then again, switching hosting providers is a serious challenge not to be taken on lightly.

@ppk @SaraSoueidan Still running quirksmode on SSIs, PPK? (I’m still running most of meyerweb on them, so no shade.)

@ppk @SaraSoueidan Exactly, PPK! All websites run on servers, all servers have default languages to use for imports. CSS and JS both already include @ imports. In theory, there's a present state where there's no compilers, no build steps, no extra packages, if desired. It's crazy to realize this is more or less here, minus some bonus features.

@Meyerweb @SaraSoueidan Oh yes, what would I change a winning combination? Uploading changes with FTP: check. Not using any kind of generator, not even a static site one: check.

@SaraSoueidan many years ago I used to use a free hosting provided by my ISP it was mostly basic aside for one thing, it supported shtml includes and I found them invaluable for having shared parts of each page such as header, footer, etc. For a lot of websites I think that’s all that is required.

@SaraSoueidan any issues in particular causing pain? (if you’re just venting that’s fine too!)

@SaraSoueidan yep that's all I want for most things! Import header, footer, nav. Done.

@ppk @SaraSoueidan I think if the goal is simplicity and low-maintenance, adopting an internet-facing VM with Apache on it is perhaps not the ideal path. The constant need for security updates and reboots, not to mention the need to set the thing up securely enough in the first place. Even for someone with lots of skills, the fewer VMs one has, the better. Throwing something up on Netlify and walking away is really nice.

(I assume you need a VM? Does apache-only hosting still exist?)

@sarajw @SaraSoueidan How would this work regarding the critical rendering path? Would rendering be blocked until the HTML is transmitted completely, or do you re-evaluate the DOM as new includes are hit in the HTML stream?

I think it would be a neat spec to propose. I’m sure those are problems that can be solved.

@SaraSoueidan @ppk OMG this is news to me too. Definitely going to look into this...

@SaraSoueidan @ppk @Meyerweb ah, so _this_ is why my beard turned fully grey exactly one hour ago

@khalidabuhakmeh @SaraSoueidan doesn't html load down the DOM anyway, grabbing images etc as it goes? Could it also do that with includes?

@SaraSoueidan I am thinking tooling that takes pure html and gently amends it. E.g. I like footnotes and so made a commandline tool to

replace
<a href="#fn_"></a>
with
<a href="#fn_xy" id="ref_0-fn_xy">[1]</a>
and ensure according <li id="fn_xy"> in <ol data-footnotes-generator="mro.name/pagerake"></ol>
in ascending order.

Used e.g. here https://seppo.social/en/about/#footnotes.

I want just html, but also want helpers that complete what I intend and help with consistency. I compile the helper to a single-file, standalone binary for Linux & FreeBSD and have them forever without any further dependencies.

@sarajw @SaraSoueidan I think the most significant difference is that the idea of HTML includes could have CSS, JavaScript, or potentially more includes. So they would probably have to force a complete re-evaluation of all the DOMs.

It might be simple from a developer experience, but I’m curious what the user experience would be. What happens when an “include” element is added to the page dynamically?

@khalidabuhakmeh Mmmm. I guess there had to be a reason why it was complicated and therefore not already a thing 🤔

@SaraSoueidan

@sarajw @SaraSoueidan Oh, another thought. What do you do when you have a circular include chain? This one would be interesting to solve. 😅

@khalidabuhakmeh @SaraSoueidan lolol yes ok, so it's not a super simple thing to support. Can CSS do that with its imports?

@khalidabuhakmeh

Simple answer would be to say that they can't contain scripting or CSS, and are not evaluated after page-load so they can't be added dynamically.

Those features wouldn't be needed anyway.

@sarajw @SaraSoueidan

@sarajw @SaraSoueidan @ppk it’s an ancient technology built into web servers that we used run ourselves. It was a simpler time.

@janl @SaraSoueidan @ppk yes! But if it's still there and working then it looks worth exploring for simple people like me :)

Do most non-static/jamstack style hosts (meaning, uh, Netlify) support it? What would I need to look for? For example, I can't see mention of it on @ubernauten documentation.

@SaraSoueidan I can relate. Two years ago I was about to switch to 11ty, but built a zero-dependency setup instead: A nodejs script (=basic SSG) that converts HTML to enriched HTML, so it adds what you would find in partials.

https://cssence.com/2022/zero-vulnerabilities-found/

No regrets, although sometimes I miss the simplicity of Markdown.

@sarajw @SaraSoueidan @ppk @ubernauten yes yes, this is worth learning!

Uberspace has web hosting abstracted away a little, but you can configure a few things with a .htacces file:

https://manual.uberspace.de/web-documentroot/#configuration

That points to http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/quickreference.html

Which we next need to see if it lets us configure SSI.

@sarajw (dropping the CC line)

https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/howto/ssi.html tells us we need a httpd instance with mod_include enabled. If that’s a thing, we can enable things with `Options +Includes` in .htaccess.

Now to find out if Uberspace runs mod_include.

@sarajw the usual suspects (apachectl -M or -t -D DUMP_MODULES) do not seem to work.

@sarajw looks like it is available:

grep -r mod_include /etc/httpd/* 2>/dev/null
/etc/httpd/conf.d/00-base.conf:LoadModule include_module modules/mod_include.so

@sarajw so yes, https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/howto/ssi.html should get you going.

LMK if I can assist.

@SaraSoueidan I don’t mind SSG, but also want simplicity and pure approach. Hugo give this to me. As long as I am not using theme but stated from scratch, it’s like going back to 90s with a bit of modern approach. Give a try and you will find that this can be something that you looking for.

@sarajw @janl @SaraSoueidan @ubernauten SSI is an Apache-only feature. I know that old dot.NET had something similar (though much more complex), and that exhaust my knowledge.

@janl @sarajw @SaraSoueidan And it still runs absolutely fine today. It is still a simpler time today.

[Now ... how to order myself a stack of 'Fuck the Build Step' t-shirts?]

@SaraSoueidan Way way way back in the day, we used to use PHP includes for this. I think PHP fell out of favor because it was “too easy”, weirdly - but it’s great for simple includes.

@ppk @sarajw @SaraSoueidan

@janl I'm not a command line wizard so wouldn't have known to try all that, but yay! Thank you :)

@teleclimber Why would I need a VM? Just about every normal hosting provider uses Apache.

@sarajw there are a few more details missing for a complete picture (where to put .htaccess, what exactly goes in there), but maybe you can take it from here. If not, I can try for a sample project + readme tomorrow.

@ppk @janl @SaraSoueidan @ubernauten thank you! Ok so first I'd be checking to see whether Apache is being run on the server.

@janl @ppk @sarajw @SaraSoueidan

Back to the Future featuring a Lisp REPL? Smalltalk's editing the behaviour of classes or meta-classes in running code?

Oh yes, please.

@ppk @sarajw @janl @SaraSoueidan @ubernauten There’s ESI includes as well – only difference is that they are included on the edge (CDN) rather than on the server.

There’s a standard for it: https://www.w3.org/TR/esi-lang/

And classic CDN:s like Akamai supports it

@ppk @janl @SaraSoueidan I'd wear one hahaha

Also yessssss I've just posted asking about SSI on the Melon Land forums (by @mk) because I feel like it fits there

@janl I kind of know about .htaccess so it's definitely a good start!

@voxpelli @ppk @janl @SaraSoueidan @ubernauten ooo...

@sarajw Uberspace is an Apache-using host: https://uberspace.de/en/product/

@janl just seemed to confirm they support SSI (a very few Apache hosting providers don't, but most do).

So ... Apache server found. If you want.

@SaraSoueidan @ppk Yeah, server side includes on Apache are the only methods of doing this on the way you want that I’ve ever heard of.

We really need a native in-browser way to do it though that doesn’t rely on server config. Even if it’s not the most performant method.

@sarajw it is, I checked. I’m on Uberspace as well.

@mez @SaraSoueidan No, we don't need a browser method. SSI is objectively better than any client-side solution because it doesn't generate additional HTTP requests.

@sarajw @ppk @janl @SaraSoueidan @ubernauten It’s quite commonly used in micro-frontend scenarios as a stack-independent way of connecting the output of various teams

Used by some very big websites, eg some big e-commerce sites I have been working on

@sarajw @ppk @janl @SaraSoueidan @mk

For the possibly interested here is a post I wrote 4 years ago about SSI. Seems to have some little tips to issues that might come your way when trying out SSI that are not immediately obvious from just the syntax docs.

https://dev.to/merri/server-side-includes-the-hottest-of-the-web-in-1995-1pn1

@janl yes thank you! I'm just thinking if searching in general - I plucked Uberspace out first as I gather they're a good place to go :)

@sarajw gotcha!

@ppk I get that, but the alternative is Tooling of some sort. Yes Apache has been doing it for decades, but it requires that specific server software and configuration. It also means you local/dev has to match production. What if I want to whip up something for a local demo? I don’t want dockerise Apache just to have to do that :/

Extra request are not ideal (and maybe there isn’t an ideal solution to this issue), but it would be cool to have a built in system.

@mez If you want to make everything much more complicated than necessary ... you do you, I guess.

It's true that you have to maintain a second develop/test system with the same config as the remote one, but that more or less goes for any project.

Local demo: every Mac comes with Apache pre-installed (though setting up SSI is pretty tricky here).

@SaraSoueidan @davatron5000

As a Perl guy I work day in and day out with Template::Toolkit

But, I’ll just drop this here because nobody wants a Perl solution…

https://css-tricks.com/the-simplest-ways-to-handle-html-includes/

@MerriNet @ppk @janl @SaraSoueidan @mk that's great, thank you!

@Dariusz_w @SaraSoueidan Sara was on Hugo before moving to 11ty. She’s the one who got me using it.

I’ve had a similarly happy experience with it to be honest.

@mitten @SaraSoueidan hell yes!

@philsplace @SaraSoueidan @davatron5000@mastodon.sociaYou made me remember about a commandline called filepp (https://www-users.york.ac.uk/~dm26/filepp/) :)

@ppk Do makes still come with Apache? I thought they’d dropped that but maybe it was only php?

I fail to see how browser supported html includes would make everything much more complicated. Would I use it in a performance-important client site? Probably not, same as CSS imports. Would I use it in a local-first site, or demo, or just prototype for myself while figuring stuff out, definitely! And the extra request cost would be tiny.

@SaraSoueidan

> Just simple HTML with partials imports, vanilla CSS, and whatever vanilla JS is necessary for enhancements.

That's @enhance_dev !

@SaraSoueidan Apologies if you’re not looking for recommendations, and feel free to disregard, but if you haven’t tried CodeKit (Mac only) I heartily recommend it. I think it’ll do everything you’re looking for. I’ve loved it for years for saving me from tooling and config files.

Anyway, that’s all. Thanks for all the work you do for the community🙂

https://codekitapp.com/

@SaraSoueidan it me

@sarajw @ppk @janl @SaraSoueidan @ubernauten y’all want some PHP in your lives ;)

https://phpc.social/@Crell/112712792983162134

@sarajw pretty much any shared hosting plan runs Apache 😊

Flamed Fury is running on Apache atm.

I still have early versions of the website (1999) that have SSI in there 😊

@SaraSoueidan part of why I left professional front end dev for UX Design several years ago. Have gone back to vanilla everything for my own indie projects. Pretty much the only reason I use PHP on my sites is for includes.

@SaraSoueidan Just a question out of curiosity, since I noticed the same when I migrated my blogs to eleventy, effectively archiving them: You ran your site on Hugo before. Was that any better in terms of user or developer experience? I remember you wrote a fantastic article about Hugo a few years ago. In fact it inspired me to play with Hugo back then.

@Marco Honestly, it's been three years so I barely remember. I do remember that 11ty had features I wanted that Hugo didn't have. But now that I crave simplicity again, I am tempted to look into migrating back to Hugo. Right now I'm waiting for a new laptop to replace my current one. Once it arrives and I record an update for a course chapter, i'll have more free time to experiment again. I'll let you know what I end up with!

@JoshuaHamilton I installed Codekit months ago but totally forgot about it! I do appreciate the reminder!! 😅🤍

@schizanon @enhance_dev I didn't know 👀

@Wilto @ppk @Meyerweb hahah 🙈

@SaraSoueidan @enhance_dev it's technically tooling, and it comes from NPM, but `enhance-ssr` is a nice way of composing HTML on the backend.

@SaraSoueidan Can be done, I did.

@ben @ppk @janl @SaraSoueidan @ubernauten oh I know PHP exists and it's all good, I just love finding out about these new old things!

@SaraSoueidan @ppk Server Side Includes? I have used them in the past when working on some old software (ActionApps) which used SSI and the file extensions were *.shtml. Importing a header or footer was as easy as writing something like
<!-- SSI include: "../header.shtml" -->
(or similar, I really don't remember the syntax now!)
But it was magic, in a way. :)

@voxpelli @sarajw @ppk @janl @SaraSoueidan @ubernauten a colleague wrote up this pattern and how it unlocked us at https://medium.com/flat-pack-tech/history-of-ikea-com-static-files-and-microfrontends-6def9d7c4285 if you’re interested. But yep, it’s nice simple tech.

@SaraSoueidan same here.

@SaraSoueidan @Marco This really makes me 🤯 because I migrated from Hugo to Eleventy and was delighted by the simplicity and direct control, not having to figure out Hugo's systems, and for now getting to mostly write plain HTML and CSS.

I believe your experience - I'm super curious what makes our experiences so different.

@cvennevik @Marco But I didn't say 11ty is complex. I'm just yearning for even more simplicity. For just the absolute basics. For something that's easily portable and doesn't require any build steps.

@SaraSoueidan @cvennevik @Marco I feel that too.

I only reach for some kind of framework when a project gets bigger than one page, because copying and pasting headers and footers etc is no good.

But oh how I wish it didn't need to be so complicated, and that getting over this one hurdle could be achieved while remaining much closer to the web platform.

@sarajw @cvennevik @Marco YES! Exactly this 🥹

@SaraSoueidan @Marco Oh, that makes sense to me. I want that too. If I could replace Eleventy with an even simpler and more stable setup, I would.

I think it was the comparison to Hugo that threw me off - my experience was that Hugo was even worse for me in this regard.

@SaraSoueidan Maybe the closest to that could be a @getkirby site. 🤔 @bastianallgeier and team built the site for Kirby itself with basically zero dependencies, for example. The only thing that happens is a little bundling with esbuild when the site gets deployed.

@matthiasott is right! Kirby + Staticache Plugin might be everything you need and want, @SaraSoueidan ☺️

@getkirby @bastianallgeier

@matthiasott @SaraSoueidan @getkirby Still one of the best decisions we made. The entire project feels a lot more enjoyable to work with over a long time. I always hated that feeling of an invisible wall that I need to overcome when we want to change something. That feeling is totally gone.

The build step on deployment is completely optional. I don't think most personal projects need to think about it at all if you are not going too crazy with JS and CSS gimmicks.

@SaraSoueidan I love working with 11ty but definitely feel the tooling. A barebones setup with zero build steps would be the dream.

I think with all the progress in CSS and JS, all we really need is HTML partials. The closest I know is Edge Side Includes (ESI), supported by some CDNs out there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Side_Includes

@SaraSoueidan Apache still supports server side includes…

@ppk @teleclimber Nginx also supports SSI btw

@bastianallgeier @matthiasott @SaraSoueidan @getkirby Working on my #Kirby site vs working my #Jekyll sites is like night and day.

I often have to mess around with bundler to get the site to serve/build in Jekyll (and we all know now fun Ruby can be).

With Kirby, I have Laravel Herd chugging away in the background and I have to do absolutely nothing. It’s a joy to use. Even without Herd, it’s a lil php dev server to test stuff.

@mxbck @SaraSoueidan Have you come across lume (https://lume.land)? It is not a zero build step setup, but very fast with a lot less overhead. And Deno is fun.

@mxbck Exactly my thoughts. Honestly everything server-side feels intimidating sometimes as I've never done any work on that side and feel like there's gonna be a learning curve, which sounds just as exhausting as front-end tooling is now.

@SaraSoueidan yeah true - it's just switching node complexity for whatever server-side technology is used 🫠 standard html imports would be so much easier.

for what it's worth, @scottjehl had a pretty clever workaround for them 5 years ago:

https://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/html-includes/#another-demo%3A-including-another-html-file

@mxbck @SaraSoueidan I don't really understand the blockers to basic HTML imports/includes. It doesn't seem like the sort of addition that would break existing sites, and everyone wants them. What am I missing?

@SaraSoueidan @cvennevik @Marco in this sense, SSI feels good, but it's still just on Apache servers. PHP also good.

But it does still feel like it should be available in HTML itself somehow!

I remember 'solving' it with a frameset or iframes in 1999+ for my teenaged creations - but that's really not ideal either.

@sarajw @SaraSoueidan @cvennevik @Marco FWIW, SSI works on nGinx and Caddy too.

@sarajw
I've sometimes wished that you could do "union files" at the filesystem level. Same class of filesystem tricks like symlinks and union mounts - but you'd say "my-unioned-file.html" is the union of header.html, body.html and footer.html. You'd only get complete files and not nestable partials, but it would disappear completely and magically have no tooling.
@SaraSoueidan @cvennevik @Marco

@mattwilcox @SaraSoueidan @cvennevik @Marco ah! Thank you

@duncanlock @SaraSoueidan @cvennevik @Marco yessssss

@sarajw (also FWIW, I sure don't like npm/node either, and would frankly rather have a single binary install file to run. I don't use node, so it's another abstraction to learn before you can use 11ty.)

@mattwilcox yeah - I mean that's why people like Hugo :)

I'm enjoying 11ty! But I crave simplicity - like, a craftsperson thing, wanting to work "with my hands" lol

@mattwilcox (I know that there's a certain irony being that the web platform is itself many layers of abstraction above other stuff, bits and bytes and silicone, but eh)

@SaraSoueidan Right???

@sarajw I know what you mean.

Honestly, one of the reasons I've not done anything on my own site in ... nearly a decade really... is the sheer "bleh" everytime I think about how *anything* will involve some nested levels of work I just can not be bothered with anymore.

The problem being; I also can't bring myself to put up with some off-the-shelf code / design output.

I'm aiming for super simplistic with 11ty, so I can just write markdown files.

@SaraSoueidan feel like https://enhance.dev fits these requirements fwiw

@sarajw
Thinking about this a bit more, you could do this as a FUSE filesystem, where you mount a folder and it just resolves all your templates so next to all the, for example, .j2 files, there are the .html versions that it's magically created. Once that's setup, there's no tooling at all from your point of view - you just edit the .j2 files and have anything serve up the static .html versions, which are just there in the filesystem.

WebDevFS!

@SaraSoueidan @cvennevik @Marco

@brianleroux on it 😉

https://mastodon.social/@schizanon/112769940843514619

@ak @SaraSoueidan have you considered returning to the forest to live as nature intended? 😜

@mxbck @SaraSoueidan Fun! Here that is code-golfed down a little further using insertAdacentHTML:
```
<object data="my-include.html" onload="this.insertAdjacentHTML('beforebegin', this.contentDocument.body.innerHTML); this.remove();"></object>
```
Of course, before JS runs it'll live in an iframe, which isn't ideal and neither is the client-js dependency of relying on onload. I too wish we had built-in HTML includes.

That said, I'm a big fan of SSI or <? include(...); ?>. Quick and effective.

@JoshuaHamilton @SaraSoueidan Isn't “Mac only” kinda dependency, too?

@SaraSoueidan Like server side includes?

@sarajw @khalidabuhakmeh @SaraSoueidan https://www.w3.org/TR/html-imports/
There were a draft that was abandonned, I’m not sure why exactly.

@lbineau @khalidabuhakmeh @SaraSoueidan some interesting stuff here: https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/127482/on-what-specific-grounds-were-html-imports-rejected-deprecated-and-removed#127486

@matthiasott @SaraSoueidan @getkirby @bastianallgeier +1 to this. I have exactly the same mindset as the original post by @SaraSoueidan : the less dependencies, the better. I really feel Kirby is a great fit for that mindset. But for sure; html includes would open for even simpler solutions for things like straight up dev blogs.

@SaraSoueidan My dearest site projects are not far from that, as in no tools. Just editing the PHP, JS en CSS files.
Bit of cheating with SCSS (I love the nesting) and JQuery to make my JS life a bit easier.

So: coding -> FTP -> cross my fingers

The Yeah Right! Museum is my dearest of all
https://museum.yeahright.org/

@remcow This sounds great. I'm personally ready to ditch Sass in my projects now that we got nesting in CSS ^_^

@SaraSoueidan tnx for mentioning that because old habits die hard.

So yeah, gonna work on the dumping of SCSS, starting now.

Now it's said there is no argument for procrastination anymore. 👍