Dmitriy Belyaev

Posted on Sep 25, 2018

Cogear.JS — modern static websites generator

#opensource #node #webpack #cogearjs

Cogear.JS is a static websites generator built with Node.JS (9.x or higher) and based on Webpack (v4.6).

It's inspired by Jekyll and others, but built on the top of the latest frontend technologies.

Provides awesome hot reloading experience in development mode.

Features

🖥 Modern stack of technologies Build modern static websites with bundled scripts and styles.Rapidly prototype and instantly deploy to the server. Use any modern frontend stack (webpack bundled) – Vue.JS, React, Angular, Ember, etc.
🚀 Blazing fast and reliable Performs nearly 1.000 pages per second (depends on the pages content and raw computer processor power). Server can handle thousands requests per second to serve static files (even on tiny VPS).
📦 For any hosting Doesn't requires any database (data stored in flat files) and works with any hosting (as it produces static html and assets files).
🚚 Deploy built in Create a preset and update your site to the server via FTP, SFTP or even rsync.
🔓 Secure. No updates needed Just forget about annoying regular updates from usual CMS. It's 100% secure for hacking because there is no backend after being deployed to the server.
Free. Open Sourced Use it for free. For any needs. Forever.

Github Pages (or any similar project) you can host generated site for free.

What it can be used for:

Rapid site prototyping
Portfolio site
Company site
Product site
Personal blog
Artist or musician site

Any site that has admin-generated content.

Multi-user content management can be provided via Github. Just store your source in the repository, accept pull-requests from other users and build a site after commits (can be automated).

Using Firebase or any other backend, written in any lang (PHP, Ruby, Python, Node.JS) or even with CMS like a WordPress, with help of modern frontend technologies like Vue.JS or React, it can be turned into more dynamic site like e-commerce, products catalog and so on.

What it cannot be used for:

Forum
Social network
Chat

Or any other site type with great amount of user-generated content which relies on heavily database usage and dynamically generated pages.

Of course you can try, but it has to be modern SPA which handles data from dedicated API.

Requirements

You have Node.JS (9.x or higher) and NPM (usually comes together) to be installed.

Download and install.

The latest version (v10.9.0) is recommended.

You can also use Yarn instead of NPM.

Cogear.JS runs on:

Mac
Linux
Windows

You may want to use awesome VSCode editor.

Installation

Usage

Go to the directory where all your local sites are hosted.

$ cd ~/Sites

Create a new site via command:

$ cogear new site.io -y # where "site" is your site folder name

After that go to site directory:

$ cd ~/Sites/site.io

And start up Cogear.JS in development or production mode (learn more).

$ cogear # run in develompent mode with hot-reload – by default

$ cogear production # build a site and run local server

Next time we will dive deeply into the workflow.

Github repository:

codemotion / cogear.js

Modern static websites generator (Node.JS/Webpack)

Cogear.JS – modern static websites generator

Requirements | Installation | Usage | Options | Website

About

Cogear.JS is a static site generator built with Node.JS and based on Webpack (v4.6).

It's inspired by Jekyll and others, but built on the top of the latest frontend technologies.

Providing awesome experience of on-the-fly hot reloading to instantly implementing any changes.

Introduction video

Features

🖥 Modern stack technologies Build modern static websites with bundled scripts and styles.Rapidly prototype and instantly deploy to the server. Use any modern frontend stack (webpack bundled) – Vue.JS, React, Angular, Ember, etc.
🚀 Blazing fast and reliable Performs nearly 1.000 pages per second (depends on the pages content and raw computer processor power). Being online. Server can handle thousands requests per seconds to serve static files (even on tiny VPS).
📦 For any hosting Doesn't requires any database (data stored in flat…

View on GitHub

Official site:
https://cogearjs.org

Docs:
https://cogearjs.org/docs/

Top comments (19)

Darryl Norris • Sep 25 '18

How does Cogearjs compare to Gatsbyjs?

Dmitriy Belyaev • Sep 25 '18

Also is noticed that Gatsby is PWA generator.

Cogear.JS is basically about static websites building.

Dmitriy Belyaev • Sep 25 '18

Gatsby requires React knowledge.

Cogear.JS does not. It’s frontend framework agnostic.

Can use any framework via plugins which enhance webpack config.

Darryl Norris • Sep 26 '18

I use static website's generators for small projects something that I can develop very quickly and deploy in Github pages. That's something that I do not like about GatsbyJS it's more like a framework than a plug and play solution.

Cogear.JS looks like is more like a framework rather than plug and play solution. Do you know if there is a started project for Cogear.JS that will make it more plug and play? Something that I can download, pick a theme, change the data and deployed it.

Currently, I have been using Hugo and as a plug and play solution works great. However, modifying it can be difficult, and I am trying to find something in between.

Dmitriy Belyaev • Sep 26 '18

Do you know if there is a started project for Cogear.JS that will make it more plug and play?

Started project is included inside by generator.

Type:

$ cogear new site.io # your site name

New site will be generated by this command.

Next go the site folder cd ./site.io and call cogear command.

System will be fired up in development mode with hot reloading of css, js and pages content.

You are free to clone the default theme or change it as you wish.

Of course, you need to install Cogear.JS previously.

Please, take a look at the video to make this topic more clean:

Dmitriy Belyaev • Sep 26 '18

I'm hosting Cogear.JS website on Now.

Deploy process is like following code:

cogear build
now --public public
# the link is given and is copied to clipboard
now alias [given_link] cogearjs.org

That is all.

Dmitriy Belyaev • Sep 27 '18

How is it going? Are there any difficulties in try to new site crafting?

crazy4groovy • Sep 27 '18

I like the ideas here! Plugins seem very powerful.

I read through the docs but I don't see anything that mentions how to start with a framework like React. Only static pages for various template engines, under the src/pages folder.

Two topics I'd be interested to see covered in the docs are:

how to set up a static site using ReactJS (or VueJS, etc)
how to build with dynamic content (eg. a service like Contentful)
- github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/tree/ma...