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New post on my capsule about this topic, inspired by Bubble and recent discussion thereabout:
I'd love to hear peoples' thoughts.
2023-05-18 · 1 year ago · 👍 emilis
I would put it so that Gemini per se isn't missing CMSs, in terms of the technology because it is so straightforward that everything can be managed by hand, but people have different needs and use cases.
Doing everything by hand has a natural scope-limiting tendency, keeping things simpler. This goes well with the Gemini ethos.
There is a huge range in what CMSs actually do, though, so going as far as Bubble usually isn't necessary. The skyjake.fi capsule, for instance, has a "CMS" that is just a Titan receiver that triggers a script to redo the static index page of the gemlog. Something like that can already achieve a great deal of automation.
Replying to a Tinylog would be extremely cumbersome to do on a phone by hand using something like Titan. You'd first need to probably use an external text editor, then flip back and forth between it and the browser to grab the URL, the date, the author, etc. All before ever starting to construct a reply.
A CMS couldn't necessarily make that one click, but it could make it far easier.
I do agree that Titan gets you a long way for normal page edits. But if it were enough why does Bubble have the draft functionality?
@sirwilburthefirst Can you clarify what you mean by CMS? I know what it stands for, but I think it can mean different things to different people. It seems like you're focusing onj a sequence of steps that could happen in a natural way entirely on the client.
@sirwilburthefirst Ah, but Titan isn't just for uploading fully-formed files. You can use it to send (snippets of) data in any format to an entry point configured on your server, and have a serverside script take the input and insert it into your Tinylog file.
Such a serverside script would work just as well with standard Gemini, it would only be limited to short additions to the Tinylog.
> I do agree that Titan gets you a long way for normal page edits. But if it were enough why does Bubble have the draft functionality?
Because Titan != Gemini, and Bubble must work with any Gemini client, not just those with Titan support.
@skyjake That's fine but you still need to flip back and forth between the tinylog you want to reply to and where ever you are constructing this message 3 or 4 times, so it's very cumbersome to attempt to do on mobile.
I could see a CMS workflow where you paste the URL of the tinylog you want to reply to, it shows recent messages, you click one and an input opens up for your reply.
Maybe even the CMS *is* a client itself.
@cquenelle Yes! I should definitely clarify here.
I'm thinking in the Wordpress sense. The CMS would be both your Gemini server and an application that allows you to manage the capsule. There would be an /admin route where you could do things like construct new pages, add entries to a tinylog, etc.
If I were to build such a thing I think it would still be backed by the filesystem, because being able to edit Gemini capsules through the filesystem is still *very* important.
I agree with what Skyjake said about how Bubble must work with any client including those that don't support Titan. This is actually a wall that you would run into with any type of CMS project for Gemini. I've given it a lot of thought myself. That's why I wrote a static generator rather than a CMS for my own capsule.
I have given a bit of thought into how I might make the workflow even simpler. Right now, I have a cli application that builds the site. But it wouldn't take much to instead have an ncurses interface with menus. I can picture adding a live preview option as well, like you get with something like Hugo. At any rate, from a purely technical standpoint I think it's the better approach.
The idea of a modern CMS is tied to the idea that you can implement general purpose applications inside the web browser. I don’t think that makes sense in the Gemini world. If you want a CMS app it seems like it should be a stand alone app that talks Gemini/Titan to the backend.
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