Monday December 9, 2019; 12:16 PM EST
PagePark is becoming a serious web server. Just wanted to say that. The docs make it sound like a one-off hack for easily hosting parked domains. It was that, at the start, about five years ago. Over time I've been adding features, and trying to keep the code readable and the docs up to date. #- Today's problem -- hidden files and folders.#
- The idea is to be able to put data, scripts, development notes for a site with the site itself. When you're managing as many domains as I am, economies like that may prevent things from getting lost, or having version mismatches. At the same time, I want control over what people will see. #
- My first plan was to use . as Apache and nginx do. I implemented it and started to set up a test case, and found immediately why this wouldn't work. Mac OS, which I use on my primary machine, uses a . at the beginning of a file name to hide a file or folder. I know I can create such files with a script or at the command line, but the point is to be able to hide stuff from web users that I can see myself. #
- Next I went with # as the special character. It's what we used in Frontier's website framework. But when I tried to test it the browser chops off everything after the # which is awkward. #
- Then Philip Borenstein said that Jekyll and other static site generators use underscore to indicate a hidden file or folder. I'm guessing that will work because they had to fit in with both browsers and operating systems, as PagePark does. I'm going to go with that for a bit and see if I'm happy with the way it goes. Respecting prior art is always a good idea. #
- All this started with a developer poll.#
