Business With Static Sites

What is a Static Website?

A static website is a collection of linked web pages that can be accessed through a URL like any other Website except there is no server involved in the delivery of the content. The word Static means no server. Specifically it refers to websites delivered from Amazon AWS S3 storage buckets.

Static Sites can be private or public. You can provide a wide range of authentication and authorization controls.

For example, if you unzipped an ePub, put it into an appropriate online location, give the location a URL, call the first spine page index.html, you have published your ePub online.

Costs and Clouds

Enter another new dimension into operating large and sophisticated web properties—low cost cloud services. We use Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 buckets configured as static sites. We use the IGP:Long Running Process Engine to optimize the content for Online delivery and get the content live in the access locations. AWS starting cost–$0.00. Running costs–$0.12 per gigabyte of bandwidth used to delivery your web pages.

Complexity and interactivity

The static pages can contain Javascript which means they can be amazingly active and the static name is a little bit confusing. For example AZARDI Online (access the AZARDI Online demonstration site) is a static website delivering content into browsers from authorized referring sources. There is a lot of Javascript in AZARDI Online, but it demonstrate the power and potential of the method.

There is always a downside

This means there is no direct server-side content processing, such as form submission processing. It also means the content of each page is delivered in full without any server side template methods processing.

But all content does not need the complexity of a Content Management System (CMS). Static sites can be given server support through Javascript AJAX methods to provide a large range of form or data submission services. All is not lost.

What  are static sites good for?

The answer is anything. A main website, a promotional site, an information site, a training or learning main or reinforcement content delivery site.

It is quite possible to create a Learning Management System content delivery system using static sites.

AZARDI Desktop has the concept of Internet Extension Viewports. A static site can be created to deliver and maintain extra learning and training material for an ePub. It could be more recipes for a cookbook, printable calendar tracking resources for a fitness or weight-loss program, interactive self-paced learning resources. Static Sites open whole new possibilities, and makes it easy and cost effective when done from IGP:Digital Publisher.

Static websites sounds like a"challenged" website.  Nothing could be further from the truth thanks to the power of Javascript. Static websites can be used by publishers for a wide range of business drivers.

Promotional sites

One of the most obvious uses for a static website for publishers is a book or author specific promotional website. This approach allows a publisher to offer additional promotional and e-book linked information and other rich resources such as audio and video interviews. These can be linked to from anywhere and have links to purchasing locations.

You can also produce your own Online Preview books right from your own site. With IGP:Formats on Demand just select the e-Book Preview Mode, and generate the site. It is that easy.

Information dissemination

Newsletters, announcements and general information like the Infogrid Pacific support websites. Static sites are the ideal vehicle because of the ease of creation and maintenance. Of course they are easy to create because they are created from IGP:Digital Publisher. The same content can be produced as high quality production PDFs, ePubs and a range of other formats.

Additional product resources

Printable charts, tables and other information resources cannot be accessed from within an ePub, or made available to registered users. For example computer books often need significant sample code support, and they need their own domain name, but all controlled from one location 

The IGP:Digital Publisher Management interface lets you manage thousands of documents and keep them organized with project access to those who need it.

E-books Online

ePubs are basically content trapped in a package and delivered to an ePub reader. The exact same books can easily be made available online, with security. You can easily provide enhancements such as audio, video and interactive components.

Interactive exercises and tests

Education, training and learning publishers can maintain additional Q&A tests or other interactive value resources Online. You can even have them send results into scoring or testing applications.

How is it maintained?

The XHTML content is created amaintained in IGP:Digital Publisher. This is a powerful web application and may be installed and operated from anywhere. Editors, reviewers and others can edit, update and review the content. This does not affect the site at all.

The site is only updated when the Static Site button on the IGP:Formats on Demand interface is clicked.

There is also an option to maintain an online test site so any changes made to the website can be checked by testers, approvers and legal (if required) before going live. Once approval is received it is a single click to set the website live. This can be repeated as often as required. Our documentation sites are sometimes updated dozens of times a day.

IGP:Digital Publisher Static Site features

Static Sites generated from IGP:Digital Publisher have a number of features that enable sites to be more than just a few pages linked together.

The feature list

1. Custom site template. Customize and extend the templates for any custom look and feel. You have to provide the design skills here.
2. Use the old stuff, or the latest stuff. The old stuff means simple sites with cross browser considerations. The new stuff means CSS3, WOFF fonts, rich media links, Javascript—like APEX@IGP.
3. Comprehensive linking. Link freely between the pages.
4. Automatic linking. All the IGP:Digital Publisher auto linking tools for Tables of Contents, indexes, notes, etc. are available.
5. URL friendly page names. Name the HTML pages as bookmark friendly URLs, or let the system auto-generate the page names.
6. Orphan Pages. Create pages that are out of the navigation structure and are accessed only from internal page links.
7. Sectioned Pages. Create article pages with internal navigation segments to create articles without vertical scroll.
8. Rich Media. Audio and Video. Link and manage your own media resources with HTML5, or link to streaming services.
9. Full interactivity. The AZARDI Interactive Engine is built right in. That means you can have tutorials, interactive Q&A, events, animations, timelines and so much more.
10. SEO Metadata. Insert Search Engine Optimization (SEO) metadata on every page, or use a global script.
11. Robots.txt. Specify whether any page needs to be restricted in robots.txt.
12. Sitemap.xml. Generate a standard sitemap and submit it to search engines for optimized search indexing.
13. Social Site Linking. Optionally put social site links on any page.
14. Analytics services. You can have your Analytics Javascript automatically inserted on any page you want to track.

 Full Indexed Search

IGP static sites can be indexed using the IGP:Content Fulfilment System IGP:RealSearch engine. That means searching metadata and full text at the same time for all the content on your sites you set as being ready for search. 

You index just your content with your metadata for the best end-user search experience possible. IGP:RealSearch

Full Text, Metadata and Keyword Search

Static sites can be indexed using the Direct Access Search Engine (DASE) giving any publisher the ability to implement private site search. DASE gives full-text, metadata and keyword searchs. You can easily implement faceted searches if that is required. DASE includes an unmatched power keyword filter operation.

This can be seen with all the @IGP sites. All site content is indexed for search on search.infogridpacific.com, and a searchbar is available where-ever you need or want it.

Custom site search is generally seen as a luxury or an expensive add-on. It is just a part of the static-site format parcel with IGP:Digital Publisher and IGP:Formats on Demand.

Summary

The static site format was created as a necessity for a number of IGP customers who had education and technical content, and needed to get their content to their users anywhere at anytime. The content is a combination of static and frequently updated content.

Building the FX to Static Website Processor with the development team resulted in something that was close to an epiphany. We use the tools we create for publishers for our own documentation, simply because they are the best tools available. We have thousands of our own documents, manuals, how-to's, quality systems, specifications, training programs and "other stuff" stored in our internal IGP:Digital Publisher system.  We normally provide the documents as PDFs as the layout and content is too complex for most ePub readers.

We had tried a CMS approach (we have an internal Drupal CMS team working on a number of projects). We are familiar with the pros and cons of large-scale CMS operations.

We never committed to a CMS system for our internal documents because it was just too difficult, required constant programmer intervention and was too difficult to set up a new site. We suspect many other organizations have the same issues.

The Static Website format gave us the ability to get documents online instantly and easily from a standard editor oriented interface; and empowered our ability to communication new features, new techniques and other information to our clients.