TwigYard – The Final Solution for Small Websites

TwigYard — The Final Solution for Small Websites @AdamKudrna @Frontendisti / Prague, CZ, September 2017

At VisionApps, we strive to build our software the best way we are capable of.

Our web applications are secure, responsive and robust. We put much effort into writing high-quality code that is easily maintainable, extensible, future-ready and less error prone.

Of course, this approach costs money.

Has any of your friends ever asked you to help her with her <device of any type> just because you are the guy who understands computers? And how many of them asked you to create a website for their girlfriends’ mother’s hairdressers’ (triple apostrophe!)?

There are couple of working solutions for such cases. Jekyll generates static sites but does not offer forms or similar interactive features (without AJAX). With Wix you can build a simple site from a template but it lacks possibility of customization. Finally, WordPress enables you to build complex custom-tailored sites, or even e-shops.

You should remember to maintain and update your websites so they are secure. Which is fine when there are just a few of them…

… but it becomes a pain when it grows to many.

This is when we realized there is something missing in the world of small-website tools.

We started designing a new tool with a single core in mind. A single application to run and maintain was one of the keypoints.

We wished to connect as many sites as we want to the core. Since the sites only consist of their configuration, templates and static assets, they are easy to maintain. Better said, most of the time they do not have to be maintained at all.

Since we decided to use PHP with Twig as the templating tool, we started to call our new project TwigYard.

Imagine your websites being handled by a single application core. One web hosting, multiple domains.

Or even lots of domains.

With Docker, it is really easy to run TwigYard in multiple environments such as dev or staging. Or your localhost.

We believe TwigYard fulfills 80 % of users’ (clients’) needs. (OK, we made up the number.)

First of all, there is no database. No administration, no login form, no way to inject harmful code into your website. However, you can store your data in YAML files if you need to and work with them in your templates.

Templates are built using Twig templating language. We all know Twig, right?

Since contact forms are quite a standard on almost every website, you can enhance your site with forms. Currently, forms can be sent by email and logged.

Any TwigYard website can be easily localised. As for now, TwigYard supports English, German, French, Spanish and Czech.

Have you ever manually prepared responsive variants of your images? TwigYard can do it for you. The only thing you need is a single source image from which TwigYard generates as many cropped or resized versions as you want. We really love this one!

All of these features are implemented in TwigYard using PSR-7 Middleware architecture. This is why it is possible to add any custom middleware to eg. connect to an API.

Did we say TwigYard does not have an administration interface? WordPress can also be an API.

To sum up, this is why we love building small and middle-sized websites on TwigYard.

We believe TwigYard fills the gap between static generators, online SAAS and complex content management systems.

Find the documentation on http://twigyard.com or explore demos on https://github.com/twigyard. Yes, TwigYard is free and open-source!

Thank you!