Static web site from LO Write files?

English
#1

Hello,

For a non-techie friend who just retired from university as an economics professor and would still like to publish academic articles, I need to find a simple way to create a web site. FWIW, he works on a Macintosh.

A simple web server (Linux + Nginx) running on a thin client is all it’s needed in terms of hardware. As for software, static web pages are plenty good, no need to bother with dynamic solutions like Wordpress et al.

As for publishing articles, he’s used to writing them in Word (including graphs, that are impossible/too hard to draw in HTML), and them export them to PDF.

I’d be surprised if there was no solution that…

  1. Turns LO Write files into HTML and PDF
  2. Creates a new article as HTML with the PDF as attachment for those needing that instead (printing, visual problems)
  3. Updates the site’s homepage accordingly

Some people mentioned writing articles in… Markdown, but there’s no way he’ll move from Word to such a different editing environment (eg. graphs, footnotes).

Provided moving from MS Word to LO Write is easy enough, do you know of a solution, preferably open-source, that 1) exports LO Write files to HTML+PDF, and then 2) adds/edits the static web site before 3) regenerating its homepage?

Thank you.

#4

A static website manager is for example Hugo https://gohugo.io/
Google for “alternative to hugo.io” if you need more.

#2

Using Writer for this task is not optimal but could be a “comfortable solution” if your friend does not want to invest into learning other tools.

The “pages” can be composed as ordinary Writer documents saved as .odt for ease of modification and maintenance.

When satisfied with the state of each “page”, the document can be saved as .html or exported as PDF (modern browser can display PDF on screen). The only technical trick is to create hyperlinks in documents to point to other ones. Writer has provision for it. This way, the home page (and other pages, too) can be made with Writer.

All HTML documents must be stored into NginX “root folder” for the site. Take special care on folder/directory architecture because this dictates how hyperlinks are encoded.

Be aware that Writer HTML “pages” are usually fatter than those made with dedicated tools because all formatting translate to inline CSS (all the more when documents are direct formatting). But there is no new learning curve.

#3

Thanks. I know about the process, but is there a ready-to-use solution so I don’t have to write and support it myself?

Surely, there must be a lot of people on this planet who 1) write technical articles (ie. with graphs and footnotes) in Word/Writer, and then 2) want to upload them to a static web server, either at home or to a shared server on the web.

#5

You write your article in Writer, as usual. Save it .odt, “as usual” for edits, reviews, … You can create a “web copy” by saving .html and uploading this .html on your server. It is as simple as that as long as no hyperlink is involved.

It is hardly more complicated when you have hyperlinks: hyperlinks must be inserted in the document with Writer using its built-in feature.

#6

I’m not so sure there, but if you are right you will easily find ther websites.
.
I would prefer to use a html-editor and integrate graphics there, but at the moment I would suggest to check if your client really thinks

You may find my comment on Hugo as CMS above.

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